Culture & Society 1780-1950

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Williams

Culture and society, 1780-1950

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Culture

Raymond
Williams

AS20

CULTURE AND SOCIETY
1780-1950

RAYMONB WILLIAMS was bom in England in 1921 and
educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where lie
took First Class Honors in the English Tripos and
gained his M.A. degree. Since 1946 he has been Staff
Tutor in Literature, Oxford University Delegacy for
Extra-Mural Studies. He has lectured in England for
the British Council, has broadcast for the B.B.C. on
Ibsen and the teaching of literature, and has published
essays in several journals and periodicals.

His books include Reading and Criticism (1950),
Drama from Ibsen to Eliot ( 1952), and The Long Rev
olution (1960). Culture and Society 1780-1950 was
first published in 1958.

CULTURE AND SOCIETY
1780-1950

Raymond Williams

Anchor Books

Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Garden City, New York

1960

For

MERRYN, EDERYN,
and

GWYDION MADAWG

COVER DESIGN BY BOBIN JACQUES

Anchor Book Edition, iggg, by arrangement with
Columbia University Press

Copyright 1958 by Raymond Williams

All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America

FOREWORD

THE organizing principle of this book is the discovery that
the idea of culture, and the word itself in its general modern
uses, came into English thinMng in the period which we
commonly describe as that of the Industrial Revolution.
The book is an attempt to show how and why this hap
pened, and to follow the idea through to our own day. It
thus becomes an account and an interpretation of our re
sponses in thought and feeling to the changes in English
society since the late eighteenth century. Only in such a
context can our use of the word 'culture', and the issues to
which the word refers, be adequately understood.

The book continues the enquiry which began with the
founding of the review Politics and Letters, which I edited,
with Mr Clifford Collins and Mr Wolf Mankowitz, between
1946 and 1948. Our object then was to enquire into and
where possible reinterpret this tradition which the word
'culture' describes in terms of the experience of our own
generation. I am permanently indebted to my former co-
editors for what I learned with them in that first attempt.
During the actual writing of the book, since 1950, I have
again been particularly indebted to Mr Collins, and also to
my colleague Mr Anthony McLean. I gained much benefit
from discussing the work in progress with Humphry House
and Francis Klingender, whose valuable work survives their
early deaths. Others, among many who have helped me,
whom I ought particularly to mention are Mr F. W. Bate-
son, Mr E. F. BeUchambers, Mr Henry Collins, Mr S. J.
Colman and Mr H. P. Smith. My wife has argued the
manuscript with me, line by line, to an extent which, in
certain chapters, makes her virtually the joint author. But
I cannot finally involve anyone but myself, either in my
judgements or in my errors.

Because of the form of the book, I have not been able to
include any detailed accounts of the changes in words and
meanings to which I refer. I shall publish this supporting

6109262

Vl FOREWOKB

evidence, later, in -a specialist paper on Changes in English
during the Industrial Revolution. The brief accounts given
in my text are subject to the usual dangers of summary,
and tibe reader primarily interested in the words themselves
must be referred to the paper mentioned, which adds some
new evidence to the existing authorities.

While this book has been in the press I have been con
sidering the directions in which further work in its field
might profitably move, and it may be useful to note these.
It seems to me, first, that we are arriving, from various
directions, at a point where a new general theory of culture
might in fact be achieved. In this book I have sought to
clarify the tradition, but it may be possible to go on from
this to a full restatement of principles, taking the theory of
culture as a theory of relations between elements in a whole
way of life. We need also, in these terms, to examine the
idea of an expanding culture, and its detailed processes.
For we live in an expanding culture, yet we spend much of
our energy regretting the fact, rather than seeking to under
stand its nature and conditions. I think a good deal of fac
tual revision of our received cultural history is necessary
and urgent, in such matters as literacy, educational levels,
and the press. We also need detailed studies of the social
and economic problems of current cultural expansion, as
means towards an adequate common policy. Finally, in the
special field of criticism, we may be able to extend our
methods of analysis, in relation to the re-definitions of crea
tive activity and communication which various kinds of
investigation are making possible. All this work will be diffi
cult, but it may be helped by an understanding of the
context of our present vocabulary in these matters, to which
this book is offered as a contribution.

Parts of the book have previously appeared, in other
foims, in Essays in Criticism and Universities and Left
Review.

R. w.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD V

AN OUTLINE OF DATES IX

INTRODUCTION xl

The Key Words 'Industry', 'Democracy',

'Class', 'Art', 'Culture'.

PART I

A NINETEENTH-CENTURY TRADITION

1 CONTRASTS 3

i. Edmund Burke and William Cobbett 3

ii. Robert Southey and Robert Owen 22

2 THE ROMANTIC ARTIST 33

3 MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLERIDGE 53

4 THOMAS CARLYLE 77

5 THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS 94

Mary Barton and North and South, Mrs Gas-
keli; Hard Times, Dickens; Sybil, Disraeli; Al
ton Locke, Kingsley; Felix Holt, George Eliot

6 J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD 11Q

7 ART AND SOCIETY 140

A. W. Pugin, John Ruskin, William Morris

PART n
INTERREGNUM

i. W. H. Mallock 174

ii. The 'New Aesthetics' 178

iii. George Gissing 185

iv. Shaw and Fabianism 193

v. Critics of the State 200

vi. T. E. Hulme 205

Viif CONTENTS

PART HI

TWENTIETH-CENTURY OPINIONS

I D. H. LAWRENCE

2, R. H. TAWNEY ^S 3 -

3 T. S. ELIOT 243

4 TWO LITEBARY CRITICS

i. I A. Richards

ii. F. R. Leavis 270

5 MARXISM AND CULTURE 2-83

6 GEORGE ORWELL 3^4

CONCLUSION 3*4

REFERENCES 359'

INDEX 375

AN OUTLINE OF DATES

The dates given are those in which the
writers discussed were aged 25

Edmund Burke i/54

Jeremy Bentham 1773

William Blake 1782

William Cobbett 1787

William Wordsworth 1795

Robert Owen 179

S. T. Coleridge 1797

Robert Southey 1799

Lord Byron 1813

P. B. Shelley 1817

Thomas Arnold f i&w

John Keats \ 1820

Thomas Carlyle 1 1820

J. EL Newman 1826

Benjamin Disraeli 1829

F. D. Maurice 1830

John Stuart Mill 1831

Elizabeth Gaskel 1835

A. W. Pugin f 1837

Charles Dickens 1 1837

JohnHuskin ["1844

George Eliot 4 1844

Charles Kingsley [ 1844

Matthew Arnold 1847

William Morris f 1859

J, A, McN. Whistler "1 1859

Walter Pater 1864

W. H, Mallock 1874

Bernard Shaw / 1881

Oscar Wilde 1 1881

George Gissing 1882

Hflaire Befloc 1895

AN OUTLINE OF DATES

R. H. Tawney 1905

T. E. Hulme 1908

D. H. Lawrence 1910

T. S. Eliot 1913

I. A. Richards 1918

F. R. Leavis 1920

George Orwell 1928

Christopher Caudwell 193:2

INTRODUCTION

IN the last decades of the eighteenth century., and in the
first half of the nineteenth century, a number of words,
which are now of capital importance, came for the first
time into common English use, or, where they had already
been generally used in the language, acquired new and
important meanings. There is in fact a general pattern of
change in these words, and this can be used as a special
kind of map by which it is possible to look again at those
wider changes in life and thought to which the changes in
language evidently refer.

Five words are the key points from which this map can
be drawn. They are industry, democracy, class, art and
culture. The importance of these words, in our modern
structure of meanings, is obvious. The changes in their use,
at this critical period, bear witness to a general change in
our characteristic ways of thinking about our common life:
about our social, political and economic institutions; about
the purposes which these institutions are designed to em
body; and about the relations to these institutions and pur
poses of our activities in learning, education and the arts.

The first important word is industry, and the period in
which its use changes is the period which we now cal the
Industrial Revolution. Industry, before this period, was a
name for a particular human attribute, which could be
paraphrased as 'skill, assiduity, perseverance, diligence*.
This use of industry of course survives. But, in the last
decades of the eighteenth century, industry came also to
mean something else; it became a collective word for our
manufacturing and productive institutions, and for their
general activities. Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations
(3,776), is one of the first writers to use the word in this
way, and from his time the development of this use is as
sured. Industry, with a capital letter, is thought of as a
thing in itself an institution, a body of activities rather
than simply a human attribute. Industrious, which de-

Xll INTRODUCTION

scribed persons, is joined, in the nineteenth century, by in-
dustfialy which describes the institutions. The rapid growth
in importance of these institutions is seen as creating a new
system, which in the 18303 is first called Industrialism. In
part, this is the acknowledgement of a series of very im
portant technical changes, and of their transforming effect
on methods of production. It is also, however, an acknowl
edgement of the effect of these changes on society as a
whole, which is similarly transformed. The phrase Indus
trial Revolution amply confirms this, for the phrase, first
used by French writers in the 18203, and gradually
adopted, in the course of the century, by English writers,
is modeled explicitly on an analogy with the French Revo
lution of 1789. As that had transformed France, so this has
transformed England; the means of change are different,
but the change is comparable in kind: it has produced, by
a pattern of change, a new society.

The second important word is democracy, which had
been known, from the Greek, as a term for 'government by
the people', but which only came into common English use
at the time of the American and French Revolutions.
WeeHey, in Words Ancient and Modern, writes:

It was not until the French Revolution tihat democracy
ceased to be a mere literary word, and became part of
the political vocabulary. 1

In this he is substantially right. Certainly, it is in reference
to America and France that the examples begin to multiply,
at the end of the eighteenth century, and it is worth noting
that the great majority of these examples show the word
being used unfavourably: in close relation with the hated
Jacobinism, or with the familiar mob-rule. England may
have been (the word has so many modern definitions) a
democracy since Magna Carta, or since the Common
wealth, or since 1688, but it certainly did not call itself one.
Democrats, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning
of the nineteenth centuries, were seen, commonly, as dan
gerous and subversive mob agitators. Just as industry and
its derived words record what we now call the Industrial
Revolution, so democracy and democrat, in their entry into

INTBODUGTION xiil

ordinary speech, record the effects, in England, of the
American and French Revolutions, and a crucial phase of
the straggle, at home, for what we would now call demo
cratic representation.

Industry, to indicate an institution, begins in about 1776;
democracy, as a practical word, can be dated from about
the same time. The third word, class, can be dated, in its
most important modern sense, from about 1772. Before this,
the ordinary use of class, in English, was to refer to a divi
sion or group in schools and colleges: 'the usual Classes in
Logick and Philosophy*, It is only at the end of the eight
eenth century that the modern structure of elms, in its social
sense, begins to be built up. First comes lower classes, to
join lower orders, which appears earlier in the eighteenth
century. Then, in the 17903, we get higher dosses; middle
classes and middling classes follow at once; working classes
in about 1815; upper classes in tihe i8aos. Class prejudice,
class legislation, class consciousness, class conflict and class
war follow in the course of the nineteenth century. The
upper middle classes are first heard of in the 18908; the
lower middle class in our own century.

It is obvious, of course, that this spectacular history of
tibe new use of class does not indicate the beginning of social
divisions in England. But it indicates, quite clearly, a
change in tibe character of these divisions, and it records,
equally clearly, a change in attitudes towards them. Class
is a more indefinite word than rank, and this was probably
one of the reasons for its introduction. The structure then
built on it is in nineteenth-century terms: in terms, that is
to say, of the changed social structure, and the changed
social feelings, of an England which was passing through
the Industrial Revolution, and which was at a crucial phase
in the development of political democracy.

The fourth word, art, is remarkably similar, in its pattern
of change, to industry. From its original sense of a human
attribute, a 'skill', it had come, by the period with, which
we are concerned, to be a Mnd of institution, a set body of
activities of a certain kind. An art had formerly been any
human skill; but Art, now, signified a particular group of
skills, th 'imaginative* or 'creative* arts. Artist had meant

XIV INTRODUCTION

a skilled person, as had artisan; but artist now referred to
these selected skills alone. Further, and most significantly,
Art came to stand for a special kind of truth, 'imaginative
truth*, and artist for a special kind of person, as the words
artistic and artistical, to describe human beings, new in the
18403, show. A new name, aesthetics, was found to describe
the judgement of art, and this, in its turn, produced a name
for a special kind of person aesthete. The arts literature,
music, painting, sculpture, theatre were grouped together,
in this new phrase, as having something essentially in com
mon which distinguished them from other human skills.
The same separation as had grown up between artist and
artisan grew up between artist and craftsman. Genius, from
meaning 'a characteristic disposition', came to mean 'exalted
ability', and a distinction was made between it and talent.
As art had produced artist in the new sense, and aesthetics
aesthete, so this produced a genius, to indicate a special
land of person. These changes, which belong in time to the
period of the other changes discussed, form a record of a
remarkable change in ideas of the nature and purpose of
art, and of its relations to other human activities and to
society as a whole.

The fifth, word, culture, similarly changes, in the same
critical period. Before this period, it had meant, primarily,
the 'tending of natural growth', and then, by analogy, a
process of human training. But this latter use, which had
usually been a culture of something, was changed, in the
nineteenth century, to culture as such, a thing in itself. It
came to mean, first, 'a general state or habit of the mind',
having close relations with the idea of human perfection.
Second, it came to mean 'the general state of intellectual
development, in a society as a whole'. Third, it came to
mean 'the general body of the arts'. Fourth, later in the
century, it came to mean *a whole way of life, material,
intellectual and spiritual'. It came also, as we know, to
be a word which often provoked either hostility or em
barrassment.

The development of culture is perhaps the most striking
among all the words named. It might be said, indeed, that
the questions now concentrated in the meanings of the word

INTRODUCTION XV

culture are questions directly raised by the great historical
changes which the changes in industry, democracy and
class, m their own way, represent, and to which the changes
in art are a closely related response. The development of
the word culture is a record of a number of important and
continuing reactions to these changes in our social, eco
nomic and political life, and may be seen, in itself, as a
special kind of map by means of which the nature of the
changes can be explored.

I have stated, briefly, the fact of the changes in these
important words. As a background to them I must also
draw attention to a number of other words which are either
new, or acquired new meanings, in this decisive period.
Among the new words, for example, there are ideology,
intellectual, rationalism, scientist, humanitarian, utilitarian,
romanticism, atomistic; bureaucracy, capitalism, collectiv
ism, commercialism, communism, doctrinaire, equalitarian,
liberalism, masses, mediaeval and mediaevalism, operative
(noun), primitivism, proletariat (a new word for *mob'),
socialism, unemployment; cranks, highbrow, isms and pre
tentious. Among words which then acquired their .now
normal modern meanings are business ( = trade) , common
( = vulgar) , earnest (derisive) , Education and educational,
getting-on, handmade, idealist ( = visionary) , Progress,
rank-and-file (other than military), reformer and reform
ism, revolutionary and revolutionize, salary (as opposed to
'wages') , Science ( = natural and physical sciences) , specu
lator (financial), solidarity, strike and suburban (as a de
scription of attitudes) . The field which these changes cover
is again a field of general change, introducing many ele
ments which we now point to as distinctively modern in
situation and feeling. It is the relations within this general
pattern of change which it will be my particular task to
describe.

The word which more than any other comprises these
relations is culture, with all its complexity of idea and ref
erence. My over-all purpose in the book is to describe and
analyse this complex, and to give an account of its historical
formation. Because of its very range of reference, it is nec
essary, however, to set the enquiry from the beginning on a

XVi INTRODUCTION

wide basis. I had originally intended to keep very closely to
culture itself, but, the more closely I examined it, the more
widely my terms of reference had to be set. For what I see
in the history of this word, in its structure of meanings, is a
wide and general movement in thought and feeling. I shall
hope to show this movement in detail. In summary, I wish
to show the emergence of culture as an abstraction and an
absolute: an emergence which, in a very complex way,
merges two general responses first, the recognition of the
practical separation of certain moral and intellectual activi
ties from the driven impetus of a new kind of society; sec
ond, the emphasis of these activities, as a court of human
appeal, to be set over the processes of practical social judge
ment and yet to offer itself as a mitigating and rallying
alternative. But, in both these senses, culture was not a
response to the new methods of production, the new In-
dustvy, alone. It was concerned, beyond these, with the
new kinds of personal and social relationship: again, both
as a recognition of practical separation and as an emphasis
of alternatives. The idea of culture would be simpler if it
had been a response to industrialism alone, but it was also,
quite evidently, a response to the new political and social
developments, to Democracy. Again, in relation to this, it
is a complex and radical response to the new problems of
social class. Further, while these responses define bearings,
in a given external area that was surveyed, there is also, in
the formation of the meanings of culture, an evident refer
ence back to an area of personal and apparently private
experience, which was notably to affect the meaning and
practice of art. These are the first stages of the formulation
of the idea of culture, but its historical development is at
least as important. For the recognition of a separate body
of moral and intellectual activities, and the offering of a
court of human appeal, which comprise the early meanings
of the word, are joined, and in themselves changed, by the
growing assertion of a whole way of lif e, not only as a scale
of integrity, but as a mode of interpreting all our common
experience, and, in this new interpretation, changing it.
Where culture meant a state or habit of the mind, or the
body of intellectual and moral activities, it means now, also,

INTRODUCTION

a whole way of life. This development, like each of the
original meanings and the relations between them, is not
accidental, but general and deeply significant.

My terms of reference then are not only to distinguish
the meanings, but to relate them to their sources and effects.
I shall try to do this by examining, not a series of abstracted
problems, but a series of statements by individuals. It is not
only that, by temperament and training, I find more mean
ing in this kind of personally verified statement than in a
system of significant abstractions. It is also that, in a theme
of this kind, I feel myself committed to the study of actual
language: that is to say, to the words and sequences of
words which particular men and women have used in try
ing to give meaning to their experience. It is true that I
shall be particularly interested in the general developments
of meaning in language, and these, always, are more than
personal. But, as a method of enquiry, I have not chosen
to list certain topics, and to assemble summaries of par
ticular statements on them. I have, rather, with only oc
casional exceptions, concentrated on particular thinkers and
their actual statements, and tried to understand and value
them. The framework of the enquiry is general, but the
method, in detail, is the study of actual individual state
ments and contributions.

In my First Part, I consider a number of nineteenth-
century thinkers, of whom many if not all will be familiar to
the informed reader, but whose relations, and even whose
individual meanings, may be seen from this standpoint in a
somewhat different light. I consider next, and more briefly,
certain writers at the turn of the nineteenth into the twen
tieth century, who form, as I see them, a particular kind of
interregnum. Then, in my Third Part, I consider some
writers and thinkers of our own century, in an attempt to
make the structure of meanings, and the common language
in these matters, fully contemporary. Finally, in my Con
clusion, I offer my own statement on an aspect of this com
mon experience: not indeed as a verdict on the tradition,
but as an attempt to extend it in the direction of certain
meanings and values.

The area of experience to which the book refers has

XViii INTRODUCTION

produced its own difficulties in terms o method. These,
however, will be better appreciated, and judged, in the
actual course of the enquiry. I ought perhaps to say that I
expect the book to be controversial: not that I have written
it for the sake of controversy as such, but because any such
enquiry involves the discussion and the proposition of val
ues, which are quite properly the subject of difference, and
which affect even what we are in the habit of calling the
known facts. I shall, at any rate, be glad to be answered, in
whatever terms, for I am enquiring into our common lan
guage, on matters of common interest, and when we con
sider how matters now stand, our continuing interest and
language could hardly be too lively.

PART I

A NINETEENTH-CENTURY
TRADITION

CHAPTER I

CONTRASTS

THE mood of England in the Industrial Revolution is a
mood of contrasts. The title, Contrasts, which JPugin was
to make famous, epitomizes the habit of thinking of the
early industrial generations. We can properly begin our own
study by an essay in contrasts between lastingly influential
men and ideas. My first contrast is between Edmund Burke
and William Cobbett; my second between Robert Southey
and Robert Owen.

i. Edmund Burke and William Cobbett

Edmund Burke has been called "the first modern Con
servative'; William Cobbett *the first great tribune of the
industrial proletariat'. Yet Cobbett began his political career
in England under the patronage of William Windham, an
intimate friend of Burke, and one who made Burke's prin
ciples his standard in politics. It was Windham, consciously
the political heir of Burke, who welcomed back from the
United States, in 1800, the famous young anti-Jacobin
pamphleteer, William Cobbett. It was with money raised
by Windham that Cobbett started publication of his famous
Political Register, which became, and till Cobbett's death
in 1835 continued, the most influential Radical publication
in the land. The fierce young anti-Jacobin died a great
Radical, who had been hunted to courtroom and prison, on
charges of sedition, by others of the political heirs of Burke.
But the association of Burke and Cobbett, through Wind-
ham, serves as an introduction to the more important as
sociation, which we should now make. In the convulsion
of England by the struggle for political democracy and by
the progress of the Industrial Revolution, many voices were
raised in condemnation of the new developments, in the
terms and accents of an older England. Of all these, two

4 CULTURE A3SOD SOCIETY 1780-1950

have survived as the most important: Burke and Cobbett.
In spite of their great differences, this fact prevails. They
attacked the new England from their experience of the old
England, and, from their work, traditions of criticism of the
new democracy and the new industrialism were powerfully
begun: traditions which in the middle of the twentieth cen
tury are still active and important.

Burke's attack was upon democracy, as we now com
monly understand it. The event which drew his fire was the
Revolution in France, but his concern was not only with
France; it was, perhaps primarily, with the running of a
similar tide in England. He did not believe that this could
be kept back, but his stand was none the less firm:

You see, my dear Lord, that I do not go upon any dif
ference concerning the best method of preventing the
growth of a system which I believe we dislike in com
mon. I cannot differ with you because I do not think
any method can prevent it. The evil has happened; the
thing is done in principle and in example; and we must
wait the good pleasure of an Higher Hand than ours
for the time of its perfect accomplishment in practice
in this country and elsewhere. All I have done for some
time past, and all I shall do hereafter, will only be to
clear myself from having any hand, actively or pas
sively, in this great change. 1

Now that the change has happened, or is supposed to have
happened, a man in such a position is evidently isolated.
The confutation of Burke on the French Revolution is now
a one-finger exercise in politics and history. We check the
boiling by pouring in cold water. His writings on France
are annotated as I have seen the story of the Creation in a
Bible in a railway waiting-room: lustorically untrue'. This
sort of thing is indeed so easy that we may be in danger of
missing a more general point, which has to do less with his
condemnations than with his attachments, and less with his
position than with his manner of thinking. The quality of
Burke is the quality indicated by Matthew Arnold, in Ms
comment on him in The Function of Criticism a& the Present
Time:

CONTRASTS g

Almost alone in England, he brings thought to bear
upon politics, he saturates politics with thought. 2

Arnold himself is one of the political heirs of Burke, but
again this is less important than the kind of thinking which
Arnold indicates by the verb 'saturates'. It is not 'thought*
in the common opposition to 'feeling'; it is, rather, a special
immediacy of experience, which works itself out, in depth,
to a particular embodiment of ideas that become, in them
selves, the whole man. The correctness of these ideas is not
at first in question; and their truth is not, at first, to be
assessed by their usefulness in historical understanding or
in political insight. Burke's writing is an articulated experi
ence, and as such it has a validity which can survive even
the demolition of its general conclusions. It is not that the
eloquence survives where the cause has failed; the elo
quence, if it were merely the veneer of a cause, would now
be worthless. What survives is an experience, a particular
kind of learning; the writing is important only to the extent
that it communicates this. It is, finally, a personal experience
become a landmark.

My point can be illustrated in one very simple way. In
politics Burke is, above all, the great recommender of pru
dence as the primary virtue of civil government. We know
this; we receive it as an idea. Burke's formal opponents,
knowing it, think they can destroy him when they can set
against the principle such a sentence as this, from the
tribute of a great admirer:

His abilities were supernatural, and a deficiency of pru
dence and political wisdom alone could have kept him
within the rank of mortals. 3

As we look, now, at Burke's political career, we confirm the
estimate of deficiency. Common prudence was lacking at
one crisis after another, and his political wisdom, in the
practical sense, was halting or negligible. Yet this does not
affect his estimate of political virtue. Burke is one of that
company of men who learn virtue from the margin of their
errors, learn folly from their own persons. It is at least ar-

6 CCOLTUKE AKD SOCIETY 1780-1950

guable that this is the most important kind of learning.
Burke says of the leaders of the National Assembly:

Their purpose everywhere seems to have "been to evade
and slip aside from difficulty. This it has been the glory
of the great masters in aU the arts to confront and to
overcome; and when they had overcome the first diffi
culty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests
over new difficulties; thus to enable them to extend
the empire of their science; and even to push forward,
beyond the reach of their original thoughts, the land
marks of the human understanding itself. Difficulty is
a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordi
nance of a parental guardian and legislator, who
knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us
better too. . . . He that wrestles with us strengthens
our nerves, and sharpens our sldll. Our antagonist is our
helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us
to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and com
pels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer
us to be superficial It is the want of nerves of under
standing for such a task, it is the degenerate fondness
for tricking short-cuts, and little fallacious facilities,
that has in so many parts of the world created govern
ments with arbitrary powers. 4

The truth of this can be generally attested, and the wres
tling is not less important, nor less fruitful, when under the
shadow of general difficulty a man's antagonist is in certain
aspects himself. Moreover, the connexion between the
quality of this process in individuals and the quality of civil
society is major and indisputable. We do not need to share
Buxke's support of the Bourbons against the Assembly to
realize the authority of this:

If circumspection and caution are a part of wisdom,
when we work only upon inanimate matter, surely they
become a part of duty too, when the subject of our
demolition and construction is not brick and timber,
but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose
state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be ren-

CONTRASTS 7

dered miserable. . . . The true lawgiver ought to
have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and re
spect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed
to his temperament to catch his ultimate object with
an intuitive glance; but his movements towards it
ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a
work for social ends, is to be only wrought by social
means. There mind must conspire with mind. ... If
I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of
fashion in Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell
you that in my course I have known and, according to
my measure, have cooperated with great men; and I
have never yet seen any plan which has not been
mended by the observations of those who were much
inferior in understanding to the person who took the
lead in the business. By a slow but well-sustained
progress, the effect of each step is watched; the good
or ill success of the first gives light to us in the second;
and so, from light to light, we are conducted with
safety through the whole series. We see that the parts
of the system do not clash. The evils latent in the
most promising contrivances are provided for as they
arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed
to another. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. 5

Nothing is more foolish than to suppose, as reformers of
many kinds have done, that this is merely a recommenda
tion of conservatism. It is equally foolish for conservatives
to suppose that such conclusions are any kind of argument
against the most radical social reform. Burke is describing
a process, based on a recognition of the necessary complex
ity and difficulty of human affairs, and formulating itself, in
consequence, as an essentially social and cooperative effort
in control and reform. No particular policy can dispense
with such recognitions; no description of policy, by a
'tricking short-cuf, can arrogate them to itself.

Yet when this has been said, the direction of effort, the
decision of what is necessary, remain to be discussed. Here,
Burke belongs most certainly to what Arnold called an
'epoch of concentration'. It is not true to say that he resisted

8 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

all reform, but his heaviest fire is reserved for all schemes
of wholesale innovation or radical reconstruction:

Reform is not a change in the substance or in the pri
mary modification of the object, but a direct applica
tion of a remedy to the grievance complained of. 6

Politics is a business of practical expediency, not of theoret
ical ideas. His comment on the unfortunate Dr Price can
stand as a general comment on the whole philosophical and
literary tradition which was promoting social change:

Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are
so fond of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs,
on which they pronounce with so much confidence,
they have nothing of politics but the passions they
excite. 1

The point has been echoed by thousands of lesser men, and
is now a commonplace of diatribe, yet the criticism con
tained in the last clause keeps its force, and might even be
applied to Burke himself. Even where the value of a tradi
tion of thought in politics is most certainly to be acclaimed,
this observation is not to be forgotten as an important lim
iting clause.

Burke served the causes of his day, and in particular the
cause of opposition to democracy. He argued that the
tendency of democracy was to tyranny, and he observed,
further, that

those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are
deprived of all external consolation. They seem de
serted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of
their whole species. 8

This again is an observation from experience. It did not
need complete democracy for its realization; it was, in the
bad times, Burke's own feeling about himself, under the
sway of a majority opinion that was against him. This is
not to deny that the observation about democracy may be
reasonable. Yet, as the argument has gone since Burke's
day, his position has come to seem paradoxical. It is com
monly argued, in this kind of criticism of democracy, that

11

CONTRASTS g

the Individual Is oppressed by the mass, and that, generally
speaking, virtues are individual in origin and are threatened

by mass society. Burke had no experience of anything that
could be called a mass society, but he could not in any
case have accepted such an argument. His position, quite
unequivocally, is that man as an individual left to himself
Is wicked; all human virtue is the creation of society, and
Is In this sense not 'natural' but 'artificial': 'art is man's na
ture'. The embodiment and guarantee of the proper human
ity of man Is the historical community. The rights of man
Include the right to be restrained:

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to pro
vide for human wants. . . . Among these wants is to
be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a suffi
cient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not
only that the passions of Individuals should be sub
jected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as
in the Individuals, the Inclinations of men should fre
quently be thwarted, their will controlled, and tneir
passions brought into subjection. This can only be done
by a power out of themselves; and not, In the exercise
of its function, subject to that will and to those pas
sions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this
sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties,
are to be reckoned among their rights. 9

In so far as democracy Is a system which enables individ
uals to decide how they should govern themselves (this is
not its only definition, but it was a common one, In associa
tion with doctrines of economic individualism, when Burke
was writing), this is a substantial criticism. As Burke
says, in opposition to a main tenor of eighteenth-century
thinking:

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his
own private stock of reason; because we suspect that
the stock In each man is small, and that the individuals
would do better to avail themselves of the general bank
and capital of nations and of ages. 10

10 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

Seventy years later, this was to be the basis of Matthew
Arnold's recommendation of Culture.

In opposition to the ideas of individualist democracy,
Burke set the idea of a People:

In a state of rude nature there is no such thing as a
people. A number of men in themselves have no collec
tive capacity. The idea of a people is the idea of a cor
poration. It is wholly artificial; and made, like all other
legal fictions, by common agreement. What the par
ticular nature of that agreement was, is collected from
the form into which the particular society has been
cast. 11

The whole progress of man is thus dependent, not only on
the historical community in an abstract sense, but on the
nature of the particular community into which he has been
born. No man can abstract himself from this; nor is it his
alone to change:

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for
objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at
pleasure but the state ought not to be considered

nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade
of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other
such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary
interest, and to be dissolved by die fancy of the parties.
It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it
is not a partnership in things subservient only to the
gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable
nature. It is a partnership in al science; a partnership
in all arts; a partnership in every virtue, and in al per
fection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be
obtained in many generations, it becomes a partner
ship not only between those who are living, but be
tween those who are living, those who are dead, and
those who are to be born, 12

It can now be observed that Burke shifts, in this argument,
from society to state, and that the essential reverence for
society is not to be confused, as Burke seems to confuse it,
with hat particular form of society which is the State at

CONTRASTS

11

any given time. The observation is important, but Burke
would not have been impressed by it. In his view, there
was nothing in any way accidental about any particular
form; the idea of society was only available to men in the
form in which they had inherited it. Moreover, the progress
of human society was *the known march of the ordinary
providence of God'; the inherited form was divine in origin
and guidance, the instrument of God's will that man should
become perfect;

Without . . . civil society man could not by any pos
sibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature is
capable, nor even make a remote and faint approach
to it. ... He who gave our nature to be perfected
by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its
perfectionHe willed therefore the state He willed its
connexion with the source and original archetype of all
perfection. 18

The difficulty about this position, of course, comes when
the State form changes, as it had done in France, and yet
is considered, in its new form, as a destroyer of civil society.
If the creation of State forms is 'the known march of the
ordinary providence of God', then even the great changes
which Burke was resisting might be beyond human control.
He recognized this himself, late in his life, although the
recognition did not modify his resistance:

They who persist in opposing this mighty current in
human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of
Providence itself, tiban the mere designs of men. 14

The difficulty serves to illustrate once again Burke's period.
His doctrines rest on an experience of stability, containing
imperfections, but not essentially threatened. As the current
of change swelled, the affirmation became a desperate de
fence. And even while Burke was writing, the great tide
of economic change was flowing strongly, carrying with it
many of the political changes against which he was con
cerned to argue. He speaks from the relative stability of the
eighteenth century against the first signs of the flux and
confusion of the nineteenth century, but he speaks also

12 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

against those rising doctrines which the eighteenth century
tad produced, and which were to become the characteristic
philosophy of the change itself. In doing so, he prepared a
position in the English mind from which the march of in
dustrialism and liberalism was to be continually attacked.
He established the idea of the State as the necessary agent
of human perfection, and in terms of this idea the aggres
sive individualism of the nineteenth century was bound to
be condemned. He established, further, the idea of what
tas been caled an 'organic society', where the emphasis is
on the interrelation and continuity of human activities,
ratter than on separation into spheres of interest, each gov
erned by its own laws.

A nation is not an idea only of local extent, and in
dividual momentary aggregation; but it is an idea of
continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers
and in space. And this is a choice not of one day, or
one set of people, not a tumultuary and giddy choice;
it is a deliberate election of the ages and of generations;
it is a constitution made by what is ten thousand times
better than choice, it is made by the peculiar circum
stances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral,
civil, and social habitudes of the people, which disclose
themselves only in a long space of time, 15

Immediately after Burke, this complex which he describes
was to be called the 'spirit of the nation"; by the end of the
nineteenth century, it was to be caled a national 'culture'.
Examination of the influence and development of these
ideas belongs to my later chapters. It is sufficient to note
here Burke's own definitions. It is in these terms that Burke
tas lasted, but the survival involves a separation of these
ideas from the rest of Burke's statement. We see him, now,
when we see him as a whole, crippled by many kinds of
imsrinderstanding. We set his polemics against the subse
quent loiown march*. He seems to us blind to many of the
changes which, ven as he wrote, were transfonning Eng
land. How else, we ask, could he have written, in the mid
dle of a sixty-year period which saw 3,209 Acts of Enclo
sure of traditional common land, such a sentence as thisP:

CONTRASTS 13

The tenant-right of a cabbage-garden, a year's interest
in a hovel, the goodwill of an alehouse or a baker's
shop, the very shadow of a constructive property, are
more ceremoniously treated in our parliament, than
with you the oldest and most valuable landed pos
sessions. 16

Of all English thinkers, Burke should have recognized most
clearly the common ownership, through custom and pre
scription, of these four million acres that Parliament di
verted into private hands. The point is not one of polemic
against Burke; it is, rather, an indication of the flux of his
tory and judgement. The 'organic society', with which
Burke's name was to be associated, was being broken up
under his eyes by new economic forces, while he protested
elsewhere. The epitaph on all his polemic is this, in his own
brilliant judgement:

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to
names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not
to the occasional organs by which they act, and the
transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you
will be wise historically, a fool in practice. Seldom
have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts and
the same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little
more inventive. ... It walks 1 abroad, it continues its
ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcase, or de
molishing the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with
ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt
of robbers. 17

The vigour of the insight serves only to underline the irony,
when applied to Burke himself.

It is here, I tihink, that Cobbett is so relevant. Cobbett
was sufficiently younger than Burke to live through the Na
poleonic Wars and their aftermath, and to see the first
effects in country and town of the whole complex of changes
which we call the Industrial Revolution. He had nothing of
Buprke's depth of mind, but he had what in so confused a
time was at least as important, an extraordinary sureness
of instinct. There is more in common between Cobbett the

14 CnDX-TUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

anti- Jacobin and Cobbett the Radical than is usually sup
posed; there is the same arrogance, the same crudeness,
the same appetite for a class of men that he could hate.
Divested of his sureness of instinct, Cobbett is, in large
measure, the type of the very worst kind of popular jour
nalist. There have indeed been, since his day, a thousand
petty Cobbetts, imitating the vices of the position and
lacking the virtues. The fact serves to show, not only the
continuity, but Cobbett's quality; for the sureness of instinct
was no accident it was, rather, vital and impregnable, a
genuine embodiment of value.

*Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to
names'; this, essentially, is tie motto for Cobbett, and he
was even helped in his wisdom, at this particularly confus
ing time, by his relative indifference to ideas. He could
thunder, with Burke, against

a Multitude of Horrid Barbarity, such as the eye never
witnessed, the tongue never expressed, or the imagina
tion conceived, until the commencement of the French
Revolution, 18

He could congratulate himself, on leaving the United States
in 1800, on returning to his

native land, where neither the moth of Democracy nor
the rust of Federalism doth corrupt. 10

But when he saw the condition of England, and in this in
stance the hiring out of pauper labour, he did not refer
his reaction to any fixed categories, or fear the calling of
names:

Aye! you may wince; you may cry Jacobin and Level
ler as long as you please. I wish to see the poor men
of England what the poor men of England were when
I was bom; and from endeavouring to accomplish this
wish, nothing but the want of the means shall make
me desist. 20

He saw, and understood, the changes in the countryside:
The taxing and funding , . . system has * . . drawn

CONTRASTS 1

the real property o the nation into fewer hands; it has
made land and agriculture objects of speculation; it
has, in every part of the kingdom, moulded many
farms into one; it has almost entirely extinguished the
race of small farmers; from one end of England to the
other, the houses which formerly contained little farm
ers and their happy families, are now seen sinking into
ruins, all the windows except one or two stopped up,
leaving just light enough for some labourer, whose fa
ther was, perhaps, the small farmer, to look back upon
his half -naked and half -famished children, while, from
his door, he surveys all around him the land teeming
with the means of luxury to his opulent and overgrown
master. . . . We are daily advancing to the state in
which there are but two classes of men, masters, and
abject dependants? 1

This was always his major theme:

A labouring man, in England, with a wife and only
three children, though he never lose a day's work,
though he and his family be economical, frugal and in
dustrious in the most extensive sense of these words, is
not now able to procure himself by his labour a single
meal of meat from one end of the year unto the other.
Is this a state in which the labouring man ought to
be? 22
He contrasted apparent prosperity with actual poverty:

Here are resources! Here is wealthl Here are all the
means of national power, and of individual plenty and
happiness! And yet, at the end of these ten beautiful
miles, covered with all the means of affording luxury
in diet and in dress, we entered that city of Coventry,
which, out of twenty thousand inhabitants, contained
at that very moment upwards of eight thousand mis
erable paupers. 2 *

So the indictment mounted, and was generalized:

England has long groaned under a commercial system 9
which is the most oppressive of all possible systems;

l6 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

and it is, too, a quiet, silent, smothering oppression that
it produces, which is more hateful than all others. 24

The terms of Cobbett's social criticism so much resemble
later and more organized critiques that it is easy to forget
the basis of experience from which he worked, and the
values by which he judged. He called the new class system,
most significantly, 'unnatural'. In controversy, he accused
an opponent of trying to cut off the

chain of connection between the rich and the poor.
You are for demolishing all small tradesmen. You are
for reducing the community to two classes: Masters
and Slaves. . . . When master and man were the
terms, every one was in his place, and all were
free. Now, in fact, it is an affair of masters and
slaves. . . , 25

The old social relations, in productive labour, were being

replaced by men, reduced to 'hands', in the service of the

Seigneurs of the Twist, sovereigns of the Spinning

Jenny, great Yeomen of the Yarn. 26

The new industrial system was unnatural, and Cobbett
could see 'much mischief arising from such things as the
new railways:

They are unnatural effects, arising out of the resources
of the country having been drawn unnaturally to
gether into great heaps. 27

Unnatural is the constant emphasis, and the word is the

keystone of a continuing tradition of criticism of the new
industrial civilization.

Cobbetfs reaction, however, is of two main kinds. There
is the reaction of the countryman, which has become a
major English tradition. Faced with the new industrial
economy, and its kind of products and way of satisfying
needs, he issued a manual of the England he remembered:

Cottage economy: containing information relative to
the brewing of Beer, making of Bread, keeping of
Cows, Pigs, Bees, Ewes, Goats, Poultry, and Rabbits,

CONTRASTS 17

and relative to other matters deemed useful in the con
ducting of the affairs of a Labourer's Family.

It was a sign of the times, of course, that so much of this
information should have to be conveyed in print, but the
book epitomizes this part of Cobbett's positive reaction. He
would salvage what he could of domestic industry and the
traditional daily skills.

There is also, however, Cobbett's other reaction, which
was, and still is, very much more controversial. In the mis
ery that had fallen on the English poor, Cobbett stood fast
against any kind of 'consolation'. He would have nothing
to do with charity schemes, the dissemination of religious
tracts, or even with the kind of popular education then be
ing recommended:

The 'comforting' system necessarily implies interfer
ence on one side, and dependence on the other. 28

He did not want violence, but he expected resistance. He
expected, and watched with sympathy, all the efforts of the
labouring poor to improve their conditions by their own
action:

I knew that all the palaver in the world, all the
wheedling, coaxing, praying; I knew that all the blus
tering and threatening; I knew that all the teachings
of all the Tract Societies; that all the imprisoning,
whipping, and harnessing to carts and wagons; I knew
that all these would fail to persuade the honest, sen
sible and industrious English labourer, that he had not
an indefeasible right to live. . . . There is no man, not
of a fiend-like nature, who can view the destruction
of property that is now going on in the Southern
counties without the greatest pain; but I stand to it,
that it is the strict natural course of things, where the
labourer, the producer, will not starve. 29

In consequence, and at great personal risk, he opposed ev
ery kind of repression by State authority.

To speak of them [the rioters], as The Times has done,
as an organized rabble, easily beaten by the soldiers;

i8 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

and to say, that it may be desirable that the spirit
should break out in all places at once, so that the trou
ble o subduing it may be the sooner over; to talk in
this light and swaggering manner is calculated to swell
discontent into rage and despair. 30

He rejected the orthodox explanation of disorder as due to

'plots* and 'agitators':

This is the circumstance that will most puzzle the

ministry. They can find no agitators. It is a movement
of the people's own. 3

He condemned the institution of the Combination Acts, as
a weapon against trade unionism:

When it was found that men could not keep their
families decently upon the wages that the rich masters
chose to give them, and that the men would not work,
and contrived to combine, so as to be able to live, for
a while, without work; then it was, for the purposes in
view, found necessary to call this combining by the
name of conspiracy; it was found necessary so to
torture the laws as to punish men for demanding what
they deemed the worth of their labour. 82

He saw labour as the only property of the poor, and he
demanded the same rights for this as for other property:

The principle upon which all property exists is this:
that a man has a right to do with it that which he
pleases. That he has a right to sell it, or to keep it.
That he has a right to refuse to part with it at all; or,
if he choose to sell it, to insist upon any price that he
chooses to demand: if this be not the case, a man has
no property. 88

The principle comes straight from the individualist thinking
of the eighteenth century, but in being extended to a new
kind of property and hence to a whole new class, it threat
ened the economic basis of a society conceived on just this
principle. The new employer claimed his right to do as he

CONTRASTS ig

willed with his own; Cobbett, on the same principle,
claimed the same right for the workers.

Just as Cobbett had seen the emerging class-structure of
the new society, so he saw its consequences in class-conflict:

They [the workers] combine to effect a rise in wages.
The masters combine against them. One side com
plains of the other; but, neither knows the cause of the
turmoil, and the turmoil goes on. The different trades
combine, and call their combination a GENERAL UNION.
So that here is one class of society united to oppose
another class. 34

Cobbett saw this as inevitable, on the principle which he
had put forward, and which the workers had themselves
asserted. He did not think the problem was to be solved by
the employers developing a better attitude to their work
ers; this was part of the 'comforting system 7 , and was prac
tised even by slave-owners towards their slaves. The work
ers would have no more status than slaves unless the
traditional rights of property were extended to their only
property, their labour. He wanted the working class to real
ize their position, in these terms. As he said in 1830, of the
events in France:

I am pleased at the Revolution, particularly on this ac
count, that it makes the working classes see their real
importance, and those who despise them see it too. 35

Cobbett had discovered, in fact, the essential weakness, the
inherent contradiction, in the theories of economic individ
ualism. It might be more true to say that he had stumbled
on it, in the coming together of his inheritance from the
eighteenth century and of his attachment by instinct and
experience to the labouring poor. He thus saw and ap
proved, in its infancy, the course of the labour movement,
and he knew that it would not be beaten by laws:

Better call for a law to prevent those inconvenient
things called spring-tides. 36

That his assessment of this position was realistic, more real-

SO CUTLTUBE AND SOCIETY

istic by far than that of the majority of his contemporaries,
is now obvious.

As focal points of the criticism of the new industrial sys
tem, we have then Cobbett the countryman, with his at
tachments to a different way of life, and Cobbett the
tribune, encouraging the rising labour movement. In the
latter r61e he has been numerously succeeded, and, in
the change of circumstance, replaced. In the former r61e he
remains irreplaceable: the Rural Rides, and the values em
bodied in them, are still a landmark. It remains to note
briefly two other aspects of his work: one expected, the
other rather surprising. The first is his position on popular
education, which is very much that of Dickens in Hard
Times. He believed, for political reasons, that the working
people must be in charge of their own educational move
ments; any other arrangement would be part of the 'com
forting system', the incessant persuasion to 'be quiet'. Dick
ens was not interested in such a point, but he believed, with
Cobbett, that knowledge abstracted from a whole way of
life, and then used as a mould into which all young lives
were to be cast, was inhuman and dangerous. Cobbett in
sisted that learning could not be separated from doing; and
that good education arose from a whole way of life, and
was a preparation for participation in it, rather than an
isolated, 'book-learning', abstraction. The position is right,
although it has been abused; Cobbett himself is often sim
ply a Philistine. For the very economic and social changes
which Cobbett was attacking were forcing a separation be
tween learning and other human activity. Criticism of the
separation was valuable; but it had to be made, more care
fully perhaps than Cobbett could manage to make it, in
positive terms of the unity of human activity, rather than
in the negative terms of a prejudice against 'book-learning'.
We shall see the later stages of this argument in other
writers.

The other aspect of Cobbett's work is his surprising share
of responsibility for that idealization of the Middle Ages
which is so characteristic of nineteenth-century social criti
cism. As a literary movement, mediaevalism had been
growing since the middle of the eighteenth century. Its

CONTBASTS 21

most important aspect, for Cobbett, was its use of the mon
asteries as a standard for social institutions: the image of
the working of a communal society as a welcome alterna
tive to the claims of individualism. Burke made the point,
in the Reflections; later, Pugin, Carlyle, Rusldn and Morris
were all to make it, explicitly and mfluentially. It is a little
surprising to find Cobbett in this company; his standard,
normally., was "the England into which I was bom'. Yet not
only did he make the point, he was responsible for a large
measure of its popularization. He read Lingard's History of
England, the work of a Catholic scholar, and used it, with
characteristic licence, as the basis of his History of the
Protestant Reformation. This book had, by contemporary
standards, a huge circulation, and there must for some time
have been many thousands of readers who came to these
ideas through Cobbett rather than through contact with any
of the more reliable sources. For Cobbett, as for many
others, the attachment was one of instinct; the originating
emotion was simply recoil from the very different social
ideals of the rising industrialism.

Burke and Cobbett, when their tMiking has been fol
lowed through, are very distinct, almost antagonistic fig
ures. Burke did not live to give an opinion of Cobbett the
Radical, but it is likely that he would have shared Cole
ridge's feelings in 1817;

I entertain toward . . . Cobbetts . . . and all these
creatures and to the Foxites, who have fostered the
vipers a feeling more like hatred than I ever bore to
other Flesh and Blood. 87

Cobbett, as dogmatically, has left record of a characteris
tically limited view of Burke:

How amusing it is to hear the world disputing and
wrangling about the motives, and principles, and opin
ions of Burke! He had no notions, no principles, no
opinions of his own, when he wrote his famous work.
. . . He was a poor, needy dependant of a Borough-
moBger, to serve whom, and please whom, he wrote;
and for no other purpose whatever. . . .And yet, how

22 OOLTUKE A1STD SOCIETY 1780-1950

many people read this man's writings as if they had
flowed from his own mind, , . , 88

Yet to put together the names of Burke and Cobbett is im
portant, not only as contrast, but because we can only un
derstand this tradition of criticism of the new industrial
society if we recognize that it is compounded of very dif
ferent and at times even directly contradictory elements.
The growth of the new society was so confusing, even to
the best minds, that positions were drawn up in terms of
inherited categories, which then revealed unsuspected and
even opposing implications. There was much overlapping,
even in the opposite positions of a Cobbett and a Burke,
and the continuing attack on Utilitarianism, and on the
driving philosophy of the new industrialism, was to make
many more strange affiliations: Marx, for instance, was to
attack capitalism, in his early writings, in very much the
language of Coleridge, of Burke, and of Cobbett. Utilitar
ianism itself was to have unsuspected implications, and
Liberalism was to divide into a confusion of meanings. It is
no more than one would expect in the early stages of so
great a change. The effort which men had to make, to com
prehend and to affirm, was indeed enormous; and it is the
effort, the learning, in experience which it is important for
us to know. We can still be grateful that men of the quality
of Burke and Cobbett, for all their differences, were there
to try to learn and record, and so magnificently to affirm,
to the last limits of their strength.

n. Robert Southey and Robert Owen

If you propose to render civilization complete by ex
tending it to those classes who are brutalized by the in
stitutions of society, half the persons whom you address
will ask how this is to begin? and the other half, where
it is to end? Undoubtedly both are grave questions.
Owen of Lanark indeed would answer both. 1

This is Southey, in his character of Montesinos, in the
Colloquies (Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Prog"

CONTRASTS #3

ress and Prospects of Society; 1829) . The comment sketches
for us the famous Mr Owen o Lanark, who, unlike the

majority of his contemporaries who had realized the in
adequacies of the new society, offered answers where they
raised questions; offered confidence where they perceived
difficulty; offered schemes, backed by practical success,
which showed clearly where the process of completing
civilization must begin and would end. Southey adds;

But, because he promises too much, no trial is made of
the good which his schemes might probably perform. 2

There are, perhaps, other reasons than this.

Southey goes on to praise and to criticize Owen. He de
scribes him as 'one of the three men who have in this gen
eration given an impulse to the moral world', and continues:

Clarkson and Dr Bell are the other two. They have
seen the first fruits of their harvest. So I think would
Owen ere this, if he had not alarmed the better part of
the nation by proclaiming, upon the most momentous
of aU subjects, opinions which are alike fatal to individ
ual happiness and to the general good. Yet I admire
the man. ... A craniologist, I dare say, would pro
nounce that the organ of theopathy is wanting in
Owen's head, that of benevolence being so large as to
have left no room for it. 3

Southey is right in asserting, as Owen well knew, that
Owen's attacks on religion, begun in 1817, led to a radical
recasting of Owen's prospects and prevented the kind of
harvest an active benevolent system, of a paternal kind
which he had previously been preparing, But the man who
is now seen as one of the founders of English socialism, and
of the cooperative movement, requires an analysis more
searching than that of a craniologist; there were other or
gans, not only in Owen, but in the society that determined
his actual course.

Southey and Owen, in retrospect, stand as removed as
Burke and Cobbett, in apparent principle. And Southey,
to us, is the fainter figure: a life's work diluted to a few

4 GUI/TUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

anthology poems, and marked in perpetuity by Byron's
Vision of Judgment:

He said (I only give the heads) he said,
He meant no harm in scribbling; 'twas Ms way
Upon all topics; 'twas, besides, his bread,
Of which he butter'd both sides; 'twould delay
Too long the assembly (he was pleased to dread)
And take up rather more time than a day,
To name his works he would but cite a few-
Wat Tyler'-'Rhymes on Blenheim'-'Waterloo'. 4

In this, as in a hundred lesser passages, Southey was the
stock butt as a turncoat and a reactionary, but a caricature
is not a Me, and there is more to Southey than this, just as
there is more to Byron and Shelley than that they were (in
Southey's phrase) members of *the Satanic school'. In his
social dunking at least, Southey remains an influential if un
acknowledged figure; and his approval of Owen reminds us
of the complexity of this difficult period. Where Cobbett
sneered at Owen's 'parallelograms of paupers', Southey,
with very many of the new generation of English industrial
workers, approved. In a movement like Christian Socialism,
the inluence of both Southey and Owen can be clearly
discerned. Yet Owen, in his main bearings, led to socialism
and the cooperatives; Southey, with Burke and Coleridge,
to the new conservatism. Southey's part in the latter move
ment, moreover, was no minor one; Smythe, for example,
instanced the Colloquies as a main source of the ideas of
Young England, and called Southey 'the real founder of the
movement'. 6 What Southey said in 1816 could have been
said by many throughout this generation, including many
of those who attacked him:

The great evil is the state of the poor, which , . . con
stantly exposes us to the horrors of a bellurn servile,
and sooner or later, if not remedied, will end in one. 6

The Colloquies remains Southey's most important work
in this field, but as early as 1807, in the Letters porn Eng
land by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, he advanced the
kind of criticism of the new manufacturing system which

CONTRASTS 25

later became axiomatic in a number of different schools,

and which is almost identical with the later observations of
Owen. In this essential respect he did not change his opin
ions, and the Colloquies is only a fuller statement o a po
sition which many thousands have inherited.

Sir Thomas More, in the Colloquies, is made to ask: *Can
a nation be too rich?' Southey, in the character of Monte-
sinos, replies:

I cannot answer that question without distinguishing
between a people and a state. A state cannot have
more wealth at its command than may be employed
for the general good, a liberal expenditure in national
works being one of the surest means for promoting na
tional prosperity, and the benefit being still more evi
dent of an expenditure directed to the purposes of
national improvement. But a people may be too rich;
because it is the tendency of the commercial, and more
especially of the manufacturing system, to collect
wealth rather than to diffuse it ... great capitalists
become like pikes in a fish-pond, who devour the
weaker fish; and it is but too certain that the poverty
of one part of the people seems to increase in the same
ratio as the riches of another. 7

Whereas the natural operations of commerce are wholly
beneficial, and bind nation to nation and man to man, the
effect of the manufacturing system is directly opposite in
tendency;

The immediate and home effect of the manufacturing
system, carried on as it now is upon the great scale, is
to produce physical and moral evil, in proportion to
the wealth which it creates. 8

Men are being reduced to machines, and

he who, at the beginning of his career, uses his fellow-
creatures as bodily machines for producing wealth,
ends not infrequently in becoming an intellectual one
himself, employed in continually increasing what it is
impossible for him to enjoy. 9

26 C3IILTXJBE AND SOCIETY

Meanwhile,

the new cottages of the manufacturers (i.e. workmen)
are . . . upon the manufacturing pattern . . . naked,
and in a row. How is it, said I, that every thing which
is connected with manufactures presents such features
of unqualified deformity? . . . Time cannot mellow
them; Nature will neither clothe nor conceal them; and
they remain always as offensive to the eye as to the
mind. 10

The items of this comprehensive indictment, and certain of
its actual phrases, wffl be recognized as familiar by many
who know Southey only as a 'renegade*. It is among the
very earliest general judgements of this kind.

Southey's affirmation is as characteristic as his indict
ment, and is again a very early example of a position which
has become general. The contrast with mediaeval society
is one of its elements, although not greatly stressed. The
very form of the Colloquies the bringing of More to ques
tion the new society indicates a conscious continuity with
the first phase of the humanist challenge, in which many of
the ideas now concentrated in the meaning of 'culture* were
in fact laid down. Southey handles the historical contrast
in this comment by More:

Throughout the trading part of the community every
one endeavours to purchase at the lowest price, and
sell at the highest, regardless of equity in either case.
Bad as the feudal times were, they were less injurious
than these commercial ones to the kindly and generous
feelings of human nature. 11

The comment indicates also a central feature in Southey's
attitude, and one which ranges him firmly with Owen, Criti
cizing orthodox political economy, on the grounds of its
exclusion of moral considerations, Montesinos adds:

[It discerns] the cause of all our difficulties , . . , not
in the constitution of society, but of human nature. 12

Complementary with this, Southey insists on the positive
functions of government:

CONTRASTS 27

There can be no health, no soundness in the state, till
Government shall regard the moral improvement of
the people as its first great duty. The same remedy is
required for the rich and for the poor. . . . Some
voluntary cast-aways there will always be, whom no
fostering kindness and no parental care can preserve
from self-destruction, but if any are lost for want of
care and culture, there is a sin of omission in the society
to which they belong. 13

The word, culture, indicates here the line which was to be
so extensively pursued: the setting-up, in opposition to the
laissez-faire society of the political economists, of an idea of
active and responsible government, whose first duty was the
promotion of the general health of society. The idea, as was
to become habitual, was linked with a respect for 'feeling*
More's comment, like Burke's, on the rise of the new so
ciety, is:

In came calculation, and out went feeling. 14

Southey also puts forward a view of the humanizing effects

of literature, which the author of Utopia would have recog
nized. In reply to More's grand indictment of the sinfulness
of the nation, Montesinos replies:

There is hope to be derived from the humanizing ef
fects of literature, which has now first begun to act

upon all ranks, 15

All these points are made by Southey very early in what
was to become a major nineteenth-century tradition.

Southey's detailed proposals for reform are less interest
ing than his general affirmation: they include planned
colonization, an improved parochial order, a more efficient
police, a national system of education, universal religious
instruction, savings-banks, and, finally,

perhaps by the establishment of Owenite communities
among themselves, the labouring cksses will have
their comforts enlarged, and their well-being secured,
if they are not wanting to themselves in prudence and
good conduct. 16

28 CtOLTUBE AND SOCIETY

It is the familiar paternalist programme, but Owen, as
must now be stressed, is rightly placed in such a context.
Southey ends with an exchange of questions between

Montesinos and More:

Montesinos: You would make me apprehend, then,
that we have advanced in our chemical and mechani
cal discoveries faster than is consistent with the real
welfare of society.

More: You cannot advance in them too fast, pro
vided that the moral culture of the species keep pace
with the increase of its material powers. Has it been
so? 17

Hou cannot advance in them too fast: this certainly would
make sense to Owen. The real originality that gives value to
Owen's work is that he begins from an acceptance of the
vastly increased power which the Industrial Revolution had
brought, and sees in just this increase of power the oppor
tunity for the new moral world. He is the successful manu
facturer, and not the scholar or poet; in temperament and
personality he is at one with the new industrialists who were
transforming England, but his vision of transformation is
human as well as material. As the new generation of manu
facturers would organize their places of work for produc
tion, or for profit, so he would organize England for
happiness. He is as firmly paternalist, and as essentially
authoritarian, as a Tory reformer like Southey, but he ac
cepts, without equivocation, the increase of wealth as the
means of culture.

Owen's Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing
System (1815) offers the now familiar general judgement:

The general diffusion of manufactures throughout a
country generates a new character in its inhabitants;
and as this character is formed upon a principle quite
unfavourable to individual or general happiness, it wiH
produce the most lamentable and permanent evils, un
less its tendency be counteracted by legislative inter
ference and direction. The manufacturing system has
already so far extended its influence over the British

CONTRASTS <ZQ

empire, as to effect an essential change in the general
character of the mass of the people. This alteration is

still in rapid progress, and, ere long, the comparatively
happy simplicity of the agricultural peasant will be
wholly lost amongst us. It is even, now scarcely any
where to be found, without a mixture of those habits
which are the offspring of trade, manufactures, and
commerce. 18

Owen is thus with Southey, and against the political econo
mists, in discerning the 'cause of all our difficulties', not
in human nature, but in the 'constitution of society'. Fur
ther, he is stating, with hitherto unequalled clarity, the
two propositions which have since been so widely affirmed:

(i) that a change in the conditions of production ef
fects an essential change in the human producers;

(ii) that the Industrial Revolution was such a major
change, and produced what was virtually a new
kind of human being.

He attacks the change, as a matter of course:

All ties between employers and employed are frittered
down to the consideration of what immediate gain
each can derive from the other. The employer regards
the employed as mere instruments of gain, while these
acquire a gross ferocity of character, which, if legisla
tive measures shall not be judiciously devised to pre
vent its increase, and ameliorate the condition of this
class, will sooner or later plunge the country into a
formidable and perhaps inextricable state of danger. 19

The choice, as Owen sees it, is between the new moral

world and anarchy.

The problem, as it presented itself to Owen, was one of
social engineering: the phrase gives exactly the right stress.
His basic principle he expresses in this way:

Any general character, from the best to the worst, from
he most ignorant to the most enlightened, may be
given to any community, even to the world at large, by
titxe application of proper means; which means are to a

30 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

great extent at the command and under the control of
those who have influence in the affairs of men. 20

At times, and particularly in his very early writings, he is
not above expressing this principle in terms of the low ra
tionalism which one still encounters in discussion of indus
trial relations:

If, then, due care as to the state of your inanimate
machines can produce such beneficial results, what
may not be expected if you devote equal attention to
your vital machines, which are far more wonderfully
constructed? When you shall acquire a right knowl
edge of these, of their curious mechanism, of their self-
adjusting powers, when the proper main-spring shall
be applied to their varied movements you will be
come conscious of their real value. . . . The more deli
cate, complex, living mechanism would be equally im
proved by being trained to strength and activity; . . .
it would also prove true economy to keep it neat and
clean; to treat it with kindness, that its mental move
ments might not experience too much irritating fric
tion. . . . From experience which cannot deceive me,
I venture to assure you, that your time and money so
applied, if directed by a true knowledge of the subject,
would return you, not five, ten, or fifteen per cent for
your capital so expended, but often fifty, and in many
cases a hundred per cent 21

Against this element in Owen, the coarse scepticism of
Cobbett reveals itself as a far superior human refinement.
Yet the spirit of Owen, in the main, is not fairly repre
sented by his surrender to such a device of argument. The
infant schools of New Lanark were original enough in their
educational techniques, but they were far more innovating
in their humanity and kindness. When Owen talked of cre
ating human happiness, he was not serving an abstraction
but an active and deeply impressive experience. His institu
tion of these schools, so fascinatingly described on pages
186 to 196 of his autobiography, ranks as one of the major
personal achievements of the century:

CONTRASTS ^1

The children were trained and educated without pun
ishment or any fear of it, and were while in school by
far the happiest human beings I have ever seen. . . .
Human nature, its capacities and powers, is yet to be
learned by the world. 22

The whole enterprise at New Lanark, indeed, is so great a
positive human achievement as to be virtually incredible, in
such a field, in the years between the Luddites and Peterloo.
Always, it is Owen's experience that is impressive the
lived quality of his new view of society:

I was completely tired of partners who were merely
trained to buy cheap and sell dear. This occupation
deteriorates, and often destroys, the finest and best
faculties of our nature. From an experience of a long
life, in which I passed through all the gradations of
trade, manufactures and commerce, I am thoroughly
convinced that there can be no superior character
formed under this thoroughly selfish system. Truth,
honesty, virtue, will be mere names, as they are now,
and as they have ever been. Under this system there
can be no true civilization; for by it all are trained
civilly to oppose and often to destroy one another by
their created opposition of interests. It is a low, vulgar,
ignorant and inferior mode of conducting the affairs
of society; and no permanent, general and substantial
improvement can arise until it shall be superseded by
a superior mode of forming character and creating
wealth. 28

HazMtt first said, and others with and without acknowl
edgement have repeated, that Owen was *a man of one
idea'. Owen's comment on this is just;

Had he said that I was a man of one fundamental prin
ciple and its practical consequenceshe would have
been nearer the truth. For instead of the knowledge
that 'the character of man is formed for and not by

him' being 'one idea' it will be found to be, like the
little grain of mustard seed, competent to fill the mind

32 CIILTUBE AMD SOCIETY 1780-1950

with new and true ideas, and to overwhelm in its con
sequences all other ideas opposed to it. 24

Owen's tone, frequently, is messianic, and it becomes shrill,
in the later years, with practical disappointment. Yet the
*one idea*, with its essential hope, has certainly proved com
petent to fill the mind of England. On the one hand, Owen's
idea of a new moral world, to be created by active govern
ment and a national system of education, merged signifi
cantly with the idea of positive culture which gained
strength and wide adherence with the progress of the cen
tury. On the other hand, setting aside the principle of
paternalism, the succeeding generations of the English
industrial working people took upon themselves the realiza
tion of Owen's 'fundamental principle and its practical con
sequences*. We need only add, as a significant footnote, a
question and answer from Owen's Catechism of the New
View of Society (1817) :

Q: Is it not to be feared that such arrangements as
you contemplate would produce a dull uniformity of
character, repress genius, and leave the world without
hope of future improvements?

A: It appears to me that quite the reverse of all this
will follow. ... It is not easy to imagine, with our
present ideas, what may be accomplished by human
beings so trained and so circumstanced. . . , It is only
when the obscurities by which society is now envel
oped are in some degree removed, that the benefit
. . . can be even in part appreciated. 25

The answer, however locally convincing, is in terms of the
idea which makes Owen significant in this tradition: that
human nature itself is the product of a 'whole way of life*,

of a 'culture*.

CHAPTER II

THE ROMANTIC ARTIST

THAN the poets from Blake and Wordsworth to Shelley and
Keats there have been few generations of creative writers
more deeply interested and more involved in study and
criticism of the society of their day. Yet a fact so evident,
and so easily capable of confirmation, accords uneasily in
our own time with that popular and general conception of
the 'romantic artist' which, paradoxically, has been pri
marily derived from study of these same poets. In this con
ception, the Poet, the Artist, is by nature indifferent to the
crude worldliness and materialism of politics and social af
fairs;, he is devoted, rather, to the more substantial spheres
of natural beauty and personal feeling. The elements of this
paradox can be seen in the work of the Romantic poets
themselves, but the supposed opposition between attention
to natural beauty and attention to government, or between
personal feeling and the nature of man in society, is on the
whole a later development. What were seen at the end of
the nineteenth century as disparate interests, between
which a man must choose and in the act of choice declare
himself poet or sociologist, were, normally, at the beginning
of the century, seen as interlocking interests; a conclusion
about personal feeling became a conclusion about society,
and an observation of natural beauty carried a necessary
moral reference to the whole and uniied life of man. The
subsequent dissociation of interests certainly prevents us
from seeing the full significance of this remarkable period,
but we must add also that the dissociation is itself in part a
product of the nature of the Romantic attempt Mean
while, as some sort of security against the vestiges of the
dissociation, we may usefully remind ourselves that Words
worth wrote political pamphlets, that Blake was a friend of
Tom Paine and was tried for sedition, that Coleridge wrote
political journalism and social philosophy, that Shelley, in

34 CULTUHE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

addition to this, distributed pamphlets in the streets, that
Southey was a constant political commentator, that Byron
spoke on the frame-riots and died as a volunteer in a politi
cal war; and, further, as must surely be obvious from the
poetry of all the men named, that these activities were
neither marginal nor Incidental, but were essentially related
to a large part of the experience from which the poetry itself
was made. It is, moreover, only when we are blinded by
the prejudice of the dissociation that we nd such a com
plex of activities in any way surprising. For these two gen
erations of poets lived through the crucial period in which
the rise both of democracy and of industry was effecting
qualitative changes in society: changes which by their na
ture were felt in a personal as well as in a general way. In
the year of the French Revolution, Blake was 32, Words
worth 19, Coleridge 17 and Southey 15. In the year of
Peterloo, Byron was 31, Shelley 27, Keats 24. The dates
are sufficient reminder of a period of political turmoil and
controversy ierce enough to make it very difficult for even
the least sensitive to be indifferent. Of the slower, wider,
less observable changes that we call the Industrial Revolu
tion, the landmarks are less obvious; but the lifetime of
Blake ? 1757 to 1827, is, in general, the decisive period. The
changes that we receive as record were experienced, in
these years, on the senses: hunger, suffering, conflict, dis
location; hope, energy, vision, dedication. The pattern of
change was not background, as we may now be inclined
to study it; it was, rather, the mould in which general ex
perience was cast.

It is possible to abstract a political commentary from the
writings of these poets, but this is not particularly impor
tant. The development of Wordsworth, Coleridge and
Southey from differing degrees of revolutionary ardour in
their youth to differing degrees of Burkean conservatism in
their maturity is interesting. A distinction between the revo
lutionary principles of Shelley and the fine libertarian op
portunism of Byron is useful. A reminder that Blake and
Keats cannot be weakened to some ideal vagueness, but
were, as men and poets, passionately committed to the trag
edy of their period, is timely. In every case, however, the

THE ROMANTIC ARTIST 35

political criticism is now less interesting than the wider so
cial criticism: those first apprehensions of the essential sig
nificance of the Industrial Revolution, which all felt and
none revoked. Beyond this, again, is a different kind of
response, which is a main root of the idea of culture. At
this very time of political, social and economic change there
is a radical change also in ideas of art, of the artist, and of
their place in society. It is this significant change that I
wish to adduce.

There are five main points: first, that a major change was
taking place in the nature of the relationship between a
writer and his readers; second, that a different habitual
attitude towards the 'public' was establishing itself; third,
that the production of art was coming to be regarded as one
of a number of specialized kinds of production, subject to
much the same conditions as general production; fourth,
that a theory of the 'superior reality* of art, as the seat of
imaginative truth, was receiving increasing emphasis; fifth,
that the idea of the independent creative writer, the autono
mous genius, was becoming a kind of rule. In naming these
points, it is of course necessary to add at once that they are
clearly very closely interrelated, and that some might be
named as causes, and some as effects, were not the historical
process so complex as to render a clear division impossible.

The first characteristic is clearly a very important one.
From the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth cen
tury there had been growing up a large new middle-class
reading public, the rise in which corresponds very closely
with the rise to influence and power of the same class.
As a result, the system of patronage had passed into
subscription-publishing, and thence into general commer
cial publishing of the modern kind. These developments
affected writers in several ways. There was an advance, for
the fortunate ones, in independence and social status-the
writer became a fully-fledged 'professional man*. But the
change also meant the institution of 'the market* as the type
of a writer's actual relations with society. Under patronage,
the writer had at least a direct relationship with an imme
diate circle of readers, from whom, whether prudentially
or willingly, as mark or as matter of respect, he was ac-

36 CULTXJBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

customed to accept and at times to act on criticism. It is
possible to argue that this system gave the writer a more
relevant freedom than that to which he succeeded. In any
event, against the dependence, the occasional servility and
the subjection to patronal caprice had to be set the direct
relation of the act of writing with at least some part of so
ciety, personally known, and the sense, when relations were
fortunate, that the writer 'belonged'. On the other hand,
against the independence and the raised social status which
success on the market commanded had to be set similar
liabilities to caprice and similar obligations to please, but
now, not liabilities to individuals personally known, but to
the workings of an institution which seemed largely im
personal. The growth of the 'literary market' as the type of
a writer's relations with Ms readers has been responsible
for many fundamental changes of attitude. But one must
add, of course, that such a growth is always uneven, both
in its operations and in its effects. It is not perhaps until
our own century that it is so nearly universal as to be almost
dominant. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the
institution was established, but it was nevertheless modified
by many kinds of survival of earlier conditions. The im
portant reactions to it were, however, laid down at this
time.

One such reaction, evidently, is that named as the second
point; the growth of a different habitual attitude towards
the 'public*. Writers had, of course, often expressed, before
tihis time, a feeling of dissatisfaction with the 'public', but
in the early nineteenth century this feeling became acute
and general. One finds it in Keats: 1 have not the slightest
feel of humility towards the Public'; in Shelley: 'Accept no
counsel from the simple-minded. Time reverses the judge
ment of the foolish crowd. Contemporary criticism is no
more than the sum of the folly with which genius has to
wrestle.* One finds it, most notably and most extensively, in
Wordsworth:

Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that
there is anything of divine infallibility in the clamour
of that small though loud portion of the community,

THE ROMANTIC ARTIST 37

ever governed by factitious influence, which, under
the name of the PUBLIC, passes itself upon the unthink
ing, for the PEOPLE. Towards the Public, the Writer
hopes that he feels as much deference as it is entitled
to; but to the People, philosophically characterized,
and to the embodied spirit of their knowledge ... his
devout respect, his reverence, is due. 1

It is, of course, easier to be respectful and reverent to 'the
People, philosophically characterized', than to a Public,
which noisily identifies itself. Wordsworth, in his concep
tion of the People, is drawing heavily on the social theory
of Burke, and for not dissimilar reasons. However the im
mediate argument went, whatever the reactions of actual
readers, there was thus available a final appeal to 'the em
bodied spirit ... of the People': that is to say, to an Idea,
an Ideal Reader, a standard that might be set above the
clamour of the writer's actual relations with society. The
'embodied spirit', naturally enough, was a very welcome
alternative to the market. Obviously, such an attitude then
affects the writer's own attitude to his work. He will not
accept the market quotation of popularity:

Away then with the senseless iteration of the word
popular applied to new works in poetry, as if there
were no test of excellence in this first of the fine arts
but that all men should run after its productions, as if
urged by an appetite, or constrained by a spell. 2

He will continue to insist, in fact, on an Idea, a standard of
excellence, the 'embodied spirit* of a People's knowledge,
as something superior to the actual course of events, the
actual run of the market. This insistence, it is worth em
phasizing, is one of the primary sources of the idea of Cul
ture. Culture, the 'embodied spirit of a People', the true
standard of excellence, became available, in the progress of
the century, as the court of appeal in which real values
were determined, usually in opposition to the 'factitious'
values thrown up by the market and similar operations of
society.

The subjection of art to the laws of the market, and its

38 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

consideration as a specialized form of production subject
to much the same conditions as other forms of production,
had been prefigured in much late-eighteenth-century think
ing. Adam Smith had written:

In opulent and commercial societies to think or to rea
son comes to be, like every other employment, a par
ticular business, which is carried on by a very few
people, who furnish the public with all the thought
and reason possessed by the vast multitudes that la
bour, 3

This is significant as a description of that special class of
persons who from the iSaos were to be called Intellectuals'.
It describes, also, the new conditions of specialization of
the artist, whose work, as Adam Smith had said of knowl
edge, was now in fact

purchased, in the same manner as shoes or stockings,
from those whose business it is to make up and prepare

for the market that particular species of goods. 4

Such a position, and such a specialization of function, fol
lowed inevitably from the institution of commercial pub
lishing. The novel, in particular, had quickly become a com
modity; its main history as a literary form follows, as is
well known, precisely the growth of these new conditions.
But the effects were also obvious in poetry, on which the
impact of a market relationship was inevitably severe.
Alongside the rejection of the Public and of Popularity as
standards of worth, increasing complaint was made that
literature had become a trade. The two things, in fact,
were normally treated together. Sir Egerton Brydges wrote
in the 18205:

It is a vile evil that literature is become so much a trade
all over Europe. Nothing has gone so far to nurture a
corrupt taste, and to give the unintellectual power
over the intellectual. Merit is now universally esteemed
by the multitude of readers that an author can attract.
. . . Will the uncultivated mind admire what delights
the cultivated? 5

THE ROMANTIC AJRTIST 39

Similarly in 1834 Tom Moore spoke of the

lowering of standard that must necessarily arise from
the extending of the circle of judges; from letting the
mob in to vote, particularly at a period when the mar
ket is such an object to authors. 6

He went on to distinguish between the 'mob' and the 'cul
tivated few*. It is obvious, here, how the adjective 'culti
vated' contributed to the newly necessary abstractions, 'cul
tivation' and 'culture'. In this kind of argument, 'culture 7
became the normal antithesis to the market.

I have emphasized this new type of an author's relation
ship to his readers because I believe that such matters are
always central in any kind of literary activity. I turn now to
what is clearly a related matter, but one which raises the
most difficult issues of interpretation. It is a fact that in this
same period in which the market and the idea of specialist
production received increasing emphasis there grew up,
also, a system of thinking about the arts of which the most
important elements are, first, an emphasis on the special
nature of art-activity as a means to 'imaginative truth*, and,
second, an emphasis on the artist as a special kind of person.
It is tempting to see these theories as a direct response to
the actual change in relations between artist and society.
Certainly, in the documents, there are some obvious ele
ments of compensation: at a time when the artist is being
described as just one more producer of a commodity for
the market, he is describing himself as a specially endowed
person, the guiding light of the common lif e. Yet, undoubt
edly, this is to simplify the matter, for the response is not
merely a professional one. It is also (and this has been of
the greatest subsequent importance) an emphasis on the
embodiment in art of certain human values, capacities,
energies, which the development of society towards an in
dustrial civilization was felt to be threatening or even de
stroying. The element of professional protest is undoubtedly
there, but the larger issue is the opposition on general hu
man grounds to the kind of civilization that was being
inaugurated.

Romanticism is a general European movement, and it is

40 CULTXJBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

possible to relate the new ideas, as they arise, solely to a
larger system of ideas in European thinking as a whole. The
influence of Rousseau, of Goethe, of Schiller and of Cha
teaubriand can certainly be traced. Indeed, if we consider
the ideas in abstraction, we can take the idea of the artist as
a special kind of person, and of the Vild' genius, as far back
as the Socratic definition of a poet in Plato's Ion. The
'superior reality' of art has a multitude of classical texts,
and, within our period, is in obvious relation with the Ger
man idealist school of philosophy and its English dilution
through Coleridge and Carlyle. These relations are impor
tant, yet an idea can perhaps only be weighed, only under
stood, in a particular mind and a particular situation. In
England, these ideas that we call Romantic have to be un
derstood in terms of the problems in experience with which
they were advanced to deal.

A good example is a definition in one of the early docu
ments of English Romanticism, Young's Conjectures on
Original Composition (1759) :

An Original may be said to be of a vegetable nature;
it rises spontaneously from the vital root of genius; it
grows, it is not made; Imitations are often a sort of
manufacture, wrought up by those mechanics, art and

labour, out of pre-existent materials not their own. 7

This is a piece of very familiar Romantic literary theory:
contrasting the spontaneous work of genius with the formal
imitative work bound by a set of rules. As Young also
writes:

Modern writers have a choice to make . . . they may
soar in the regions of liberty, or move in the soft fet
ters of easy imitation*

But what Young is saying when he defines an 'original' is,
if we look at his terms, very closely linked with a whole
general movement of society. It is certainly literary theory,
but as certainly it is not being formulated in isolation. When
he says of an original that It grows, it is not made*, he is
using the exact terms on which Burke based his whole
philosophical criticism of the new politics. The contrast be-

THE ROMANTIC ARTIST 41

tween 'grows' and 'made' was to become the contrast "be
tween 'organic' and 'mechanical' which lies at the very
centre of a tradition which has continued to our own day.
Again, when he defines an 'imitation', Young condemns it
in terms of the very industrial processes which were about to
transform English society: 'a sort of manufacture, wrought
up by those mechanics . . . out of pre-existent materials
not their own'. The point may or may not hold in literary
theory; but these are certainly the terms and the implied
values by which the coming industrial civilization was to be
condemned.

Burke condemned the new society in terms of his experi
ence (or his idealization) of the earlier society. But increas
ingly as the huge changes manifested themselves the con
demnation became specialized, and, in a sense, abstract.
One part of the specialization was the growth of the stand
ard of Cultivation or Culture; another part, closely related
to this and later in fact to combine with it, was the growth
of the new idea of Art. This new idea of a superior reality,
and even of a superior power, is strikingly expressed by
Blake;

'Now Art has lost its mental charms

France shall subdue the World in Arms.'

So spoke an Angel at my birth,

Then said, 'Descend thou upon Earth.

Renew the Arts on Britain's Shore,

And France shall fall down and adore.

With works of Art their armies meet,

And War shall sink beneath thy feet.

But if thy Nation Arts refuse,

And if they scorn the immortal Muse,

France shall the arts of Peace restore,

And save thee from the Ungrateful shore.'

Spirit, who lov'st Britannia's Isle,

Round which the Fiends of Commerce smile. . . . 9

In Blake, the professional pressures can be easily discerned,
for he suffered badly in 'the desolate market where none
come to buy'. He reminds us of Young, when he attacks

42 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

the interest of the Monopolizing Trader who Manu
factures Art by the Hands of Ignorant Journeymen till
. . . he is Counted the Greatest Genius who can sell a
Good-for-Nothing Commodity for a Great Price. 10

But, equally, Blake's criticism goes far beyond the profes
sional complaint: the Imagination which, for him, Art em
bodies is no commodity, but

a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really and
Unchangeably. 11

It is in such a light that the inadequacies of existing society
and of the quality of life which it promotes are to be seen
and condemned.

It is important to measure the strength of this claim, for
we shall misunderstand it if we look only at some of the later
divagations of the idea of Genius. The ambiguous word in
Young's definition is Imitation*, which in nearly all Ro
mantic theory acquired a heavily derogatory sense. This is
because 'imitation' was understood to mean Imitation of
works already done', that is to say conformity to a given
set of rules. The eloquence deployed against the set of rules
is both remarkable and, in the end, tedious. What was hap
pening, technically, was no more than a change of conven
tion, which when it is of any magnitude normally carries
such eloquence as a by-product. To the degree that the
change is more than a change in conventionand changes
in convention only occur when there are radical changes
in the general structure of feeling the word 'Imitation' is
particularly confusing. For indeed, in the best 'classicist'
theory, Imitation is the term normally used to describe what
Blake has just described, and what all the Romantic writers
emphasized: *a Representation of what Eternally Exists,
Really and Unchangeably*. Imitation, at its best, was not
understood as adherence to somebody else's rules; it was,
rather, 'imitation of the universal reality'. An artist's precepts
were not so much previous works of art as the 'universals'
(in Aristotle's term) or permanent realities. This argu
ment, really, had been completed in the writings of the
Renaissance.

THE ROMANTIC AHTIST 43

The tendency of Romanticism is towards a vehement re
fection of dogmas of method in art, but it is also, very
clearly, towards a claim which all good classical theory
would have recognized: the claim that the artist's business
is to "read the open secret of the universe*. A romantic'
critic like Ruskrn, for example, bases his whole theory of art
on just this 'classicist* doctrine. The artist perceives and rep
resents Essential Reality, and he does so by virtue of his
master faculty Imagination. In fact, the doctrines of 'the
genius' (the autonomous creative artist) and of the 'supe
rior reality of art* (penetration to a sphere of universal
truth) were in Romantic thinking two sides of the same
claim. Both Romanticism and Classicism are in this sense
idealist theories of art; they are really opposed not so much
by each other as by naturalism.

What was important at this time was the stress given to
a mode of human experience and activity which the prog
ress of society seemed increasingly to deny. Wordsworth
might hold with particular conviction the idea of the per
secuted genius, but there is a more general significance in
his attitudes to poetry, and indeed to art as a whole:

High is our calling, Friend! Creative Art . . .

Demands the service of a mind and heart

Though sensitive, yet in their weakest part

Heroically fashioned to infuse

Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse

While the whole world seems adverse to desert. 12

These are the lines to the painter Haydon, in December
1815. They are significant for the additional reason that
they mark the fusing into the common 'sphere of imagina
tive truth' of the two separate arts, or skills, of poetry and
painting. While in one sense the market was specializing the
artist, artists themselves were seeking to generalize their
skills into the common property of imaginative truth. Al
ways, this kind of emphasis is to be seen as a mode of de
fence: the defensive tone in Wordsworth's lines is very ob
vious, and in this they are entirely characteristic. At one
level the defence is evidently compensatory: the height of
the artists* claim is also the height of their despair. They

44 CHLTTDBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

defined, emphatically, their high calling, but they came to
define and to emphasize because they were convinced that
the principles on which the new society was being organ
ized were actively hostile to the necessary principles of art
Yet, while to see the matter in this way is to explain the
new emphasis, it is not to explain it away. What was laid
down as a defensive reaction became in the course of the
century a most important positive principle, which in its
full implications was deeply and generally humane.

There are many texts from which this principle can be
illustrated, but the most characteristic, as it is also among
the best known, is Wordsworth's Preface of 1800 to the
Lyrical Ballads. Here it is not only the truth but the general
humanity of poetry which Wordsworth emphasizes: first,
by attacking those

who talk of Poetry as of a matter of amusement and
idle pleasure; who will converse with us as gravely

about a taste for poetry, as they express it, as if it were

a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or
Frontiniac or Sherry. 18

The concept of taste which implies one kind of relation
ship between writer and reader is inadequate because

it is a metaphor, taken from a passive sense of the
human body, and transferred to things which are in
their essence not passive to intellectual acts and op
erations. . . . But the profound and the exquisite in
feeling, the lofty and universal in thought and imagina
tion ... are neither of them, accurately speaking, ob
jects of a faculty which could ever without a sinking
in the spirit of Nations have been designated by the
metaphor Taste. And why? Because without the exer
tion of a cooperating power in the mind of the Reader,
there can be no adequate sympathy with either of
these emotions: without this auxiliary impulse, ele
vated or profound passion cannot exist. 14

This states in another way an important criticism of the
new kind of social relationships of art: when art is a com
modity, taste is adequate, but when it is something more, a

TEE ROMANTIC ARTIST 45

more active relationship is essential. The 'something more'
Is commonly defined:

Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that Poetry is the
most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object is
truth, not individual and local, but general and opera
tive; not standing upon external testimony, but carried
alive into the heart by passion; truth which is its own
testimony, which gives competence and confidence to
the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them
from the same tribunal. . . . The Poet writes under
one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving
immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that
information which may be expected from him, not as a
lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a
natural philosopher, but as a Man. . . . To this knowl
edge which all men carry about with them, and to
these sympathies in which, without any other discipline
than that of our daily Me, we are fitted to take de
light, the Poet principally directs his attention. . . .
He is the rock of defence for human nature; an up
holder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him
relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and
climate, of language and manners, of laws and cus
toms: in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and
things violently destroyed; the Poet binds together by
passion and knowledge the vast empire of human so
ciety, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over
all time. 15

This is the case which, in its essentials, was to be eloquently
restated by Shelley in his Defence of Poetry. It is the case
which extends through Ruskin and Morris into our own
century, when Poetry, as Wordsworth would have ap
proved, has been widened to Art in general. The whole
tradition can be summed up in one striking phrase used by
Wordsworth, where the poet, the artist in general, is seen as

an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with
him relationship and love. 16

Artists, in this mood, came to see themselves as agents of

46 CULTTJBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

the 'revolution for life', in their capacity as bearers of the
creative imagination. Here, again, is one of the principal
sources of the idea of Culture; it was on this basis that the
association of the idea of the general perfection of humanity
with the practice and study of the arts was to be made. For
here, in the work of artists-~*the first and last of all knowl
edge ... as immortal as the heart of man' was a practica
ble mode of access to that ideal of human perfection which
was to be the centre of defence against the disintegrating
tendencies of the age.

The emphasis on a general common humanity was evi
dently necessary in a period in which a new kind of society
was coming to think of man as merely a specialized instru
ment of production. The emphasis on love and relationship
was necessary not only within the immediate suffering but
against the aggressive individualism and the primarily
economic relationships which the new society embodied.
Emphasis on the creative imagination, similarly, may be
seen as an alternative construction of human motive and
energy, in contrast with the assumptions of the prevailing
political economy. This point is indeed the most interesting
part of Shelley's Defence:

Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the political econo
mist combines, labour, let them beware that their spec
ulations, for want of correspondence with those first
principles which belong to the imagination, do not
tend, as they have in modern England, to exasperate at
once the extremes of luxury and want. . . . The rich
have become richer, and the poor have become poorer;
and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla
and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Such are the
effects which must ever flow from an unmitigated ex
ercise of the calculating faculty. 17

This is the general indictment which we can see already
forming as a tradition, and the remedy is in the same terms:

There is no want of knowledge respecting what is
wisest and best in morals, government, and political
economy, or at least, what is wiser and better than

THE ROMANTIC AUTIST 47

what men now practise or endure. But ... we want
the creative faculty to imagine that which we know;
we want the generous impulse to act that which we
imagine; we want the poetry of life: our calculations
have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we
can digest. . . . Poetry, and the Principle of Self, of
which Money is the visible incarnation, are the God
and Mammon of the world. 18

The most obvious criticism of such a position as Shelley's
is that, while it is wholly valuable to present a wider and
more substantial account of human motive and energy than
was contained in the philosophy of industrialism, there are
corresponding dangers in specializing this more substantial
energy to the act of poetry, or of art in general. It is this
specialization which, later, made much of this criticism in
effectual. The point will become clearer in the later stages
of our enquiry, where it will be a question of distinguishing
between the idea of culture as art and the idea of culture
as a whole way of life. The positive consequence of the idea
of art as a superior reality was that it offered an immediate
basis for an important criticism of industrialism. The nega
tive consequence was that it tended, as both the situation
and the opposition hardened, to isolate art, to specialize the
imaginative faculty to this one kind of activity, and thus to
weaken the dynamic function which Shelley proposed for
it. We have already examined certain of the factors which
tended towards this specialization; it remains now to ex
amine the growth of the idea of the artist as a 'special kind
of person*.

The word Art, which had commonly meant 'skill', be
came specialized during the course of the eighteenth cen
tury, rst to 'painting*, and then to the imaginative arts
generally. Artist, similarly, from the general sense of a
skilled person, in either the liberal' or the 'useful' arts, had
become specialized in the same direction, and had distin
guished itself from artisan (formerly equivalent with artist,
but later becoming what we still call, in the opposite spe
cialized sense, a 'skilled worker*), and of course from
craftsman. The emphasis on skill, in the word, was gradu-

48 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

ally replaced by an emphasis on sensibility; and this replace
ment was supported by the parallel changes in such words
as creative (a word which could not have been applied to
art until the idea of the 'superior reality' was forming),
original (with its important implications of spontaneity and
vitalism; a word, we remember, that Young virtually con
trasted with art in the sense of skill), and genius (which,
because of its root association with the idea of inspiration,
had changed from 'characteristic disposition* to 'exalted
special ability', and took its tone in this from the other affec
tive words) . From artist in the new sense there were formed
artistic and artistical, and these, by the end of the nineteenth
century, had certainly more reference to 'temperament*
than to skill or practice. Aesthetics, itself a new word, and
a product of the specialization, similarly stood parent to
aesthete, which again indicated a 'special kind of person*.
The claim that the artist revealed a higher kind of truth
is, as we have seen, not new in the Romantic period, al
though it received significant additional emphasis. The im
portant corollary of the idea was, however, the conception
of the artist's autonomy in this kind of revelation; his sub
stantive element, for example, was now not faith but gen
ius. In its opposition to the 'set of rales', the autonomous
claim is of course attractive. Keats puts it finely;

The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation
in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept,
but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which
is creative must create itself. 19

Our sympathy with this rests on the emphasis on a personal
discipline, which is very far removed from talk of the 'wild*
or lawless* genius. The difference is there, in Keats, in the
emphasis on 'the Genius of Poetry', which is impersonal as
compared with the personal 'genius*. Coleridge put the
same emphasis on law, with the same corresponding em
phasis on autonomy:

No work of true genius dares want its appropriate
form, neither indeed is there any danger of this. As it
must not, so genius cannot, be lawless; for it is even

THE ROMANTIC ARTIST ^g

this that constitutes it genius-the power of acting

creatively under laws of its own origination. 20

This is at once more rational and more useful for the male-
ing of art than the emphasis, at least as common in Ro
mantic pamphleteering, on an 'artless spontaneity'. Of the
Art (sensibility) which claims that it can dispense with art
(skill) the subsequent years hold more than enough ex
amples.

As literary theory, the emphases of Keats and Coleridge
are valuable. The difficulty is that this kind of statement
became entangled with other kinds of reaction to the prob
lem of the artist's relations with society. The instance of
Keats is most significant, in that the entanglement is less
and the concentration more. If we complete the sentence
earlier quoted from him we find:

I have not the slightest feel of humility towards the
public, or to anything in existence,-but the eternal

Being, the Principle of Beauty, and the Memory of
Great Men. 21

This is characteristic, as is the famous affirmation:

I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the
Heart's affections, and the truth of Imagination. What
the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth
whether it existed before or not for I have the same
idea of all our passions as of Love; they are all, in their
sublime, creative of essential Beauty. . . . The Imagi
nation may be compared to Adam's dream he awoke
and found it truth. 22

But the account of the artist's personality which Keats then
gives is, in his famous phrase, that of 'Negative Capability
. . . when a man is capable of being in uncertainties,
mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact
and reason*. 28 Or again:

Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal Chemicals
operating on the Mass of neutral intellect but they
have not any individuality, any determined Character

5<5 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

I would call the top and head of those who have a
proper self, Men of Power. 24

It is certainly possible to see this emphasis on passivity as a
compensatory reaction, but this is less important than the
fact that Keats's emphasis is on the poetic process rather
than on the poetic personality. The theory of Negative Ca
pability could degenerate into the wider and more popular
theory of the poet as 'dreamer*, but Keats himself worked
finely, in experience, to distinguish between 'dreamer' and
*poef, and if in the second Hyperion his formal conclusion
is uncertain, it is at least clear that what he means by
*dream' is something as hard and positive as his own skill.
It is not from the fine discipline of a Keats that the loose
conception of the romantic artist can be drawn.

Wordsworth, in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, shows us
most clearly how consideration of the poetic process be
came entangled with more general questions of the artist
and society. In discussing his own theory of poetic lan
guage, he is in fact discussing communication. He asserts,
reasonably and moderately, the familiar attitude to the
Public:

Such faulty expressions, were I convinced they were
faulty at present, and that they must necessarily con
tinue to be so, I would willingly take all reasonable
pains to correct. But it is dangerous to make these
alterations on the simple authority of a few individuals,
or even of certain classes of men; for where the un
derstanding of an Author is not convinced, or his feel
ings altered, this cannot be done without great injury
to himself: for his own feelings are his stay and
support. 25

This has to be said on the one side, while at the same time
Wordsworth is saying:

The Poet thinks and feels in the spirit of human pas
sions. How, then, can his language differ in any ma
terial degree from that of all other men who feel viv
idly and see clearly? 26

THE ROMANTIC ARTIST 51

And so:

Among the qualities . . enumerated as principally
conducing to form a Poet, is implied nothing differing
in kind from other men, but only in degree. . . . The
Poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a
greater promptness to think and feel without immedi
ate external excitement, and a greater power in ex
pressing such thoughts and feelings as are produced
in him in that manner. But these passions and thoughts
and feelings are the general passions and thoughts and
feelings of men. 27

Of these chief distinctions, while the first is a description of
a psychological type, the second is a description of a skill.
While the two are held in combination, the argument is
plausible. But in fact, under the tensions of the general
situation, it became possible to dissociate them, and so to
isolate the 'artistic sensibility'.

The matter is exceptionally complex, and what hap
pened, imder the stress of events, was a series of simplifica
tions. The obstruction of a certain kind of experience was
simplified to the obstruction of poetry, which was then
identified with it and even made to stand for it as a whole.
Under pressure, art became a symbolic abstraction for a
whole range of general human experience: a valuable ab
straction, because indeed great art has this ultimate power;
yet an abstraction nevertheless, because a general social
activity was forced into the status of a department or prov
ince, and actual works of art were in part converted into a
self-pleading ideology. This description is not offered for
purposes of censure; it is a fact, rather, with which we have
to learn to come to terms. There is high courage, and actual
utility, if also simplification, in Romantic claims for the im
agination. There is courage, also, in the very weakness
which, ultimately, we find in the special pleading of per
sonality. In practice there were deep insights, and great
works of art; but, in the continuous pressure of living, the
free play of genius found it increasingly difficult to consort
with the free play of the market, and the difficulty was not
solved, but cushioned, by an idealization. The last pages of

5& CULTimE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Shelley's Defence of Poetry are painful to read. The bearers
of a high imaginative skill become suddenly the legislators',
at the very moment when they were being forced into prac
tical exile; their description as 'unacknowledged', which, on
the theory, ought only to be a fact to be accepted, carries
with it also the felt helplessness of a generation. Then
Shelley at the same time claims that the Poet

ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the
wisest, and the most illustrious of men; 28

where the emphasis, inescapably, falls painfully on the
ought. The pressures, here personal as well as general,
create, as a defensive reaction, the separation of poets from
other men, and their classification into an idealized general
person, TPoetf or 'Artist', which was to be so widely and so
damagingly received. The appeal, as it had to be, is beyond
the living community, to the

mediator and . . . redeemer, Time. 20

Over the England of 1821 there had, after all, to be some
higher Court of Appeal We are not likely, when we re
member the lives of any of these men, to be betrayed into
the irritability of prosecution, but it is well, also, if we can
avoid the irritability of defence. The whole action has
passed into our common experience, to Be there, formu
lated and unformulated, to move and to be examined. *For
it is less their spirit, than the spirit of the age/ 80

CHAPTER III

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLERIDGE

THE essays of John Stuart Mil on Jeremy Bentham and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge are among the most remarkable
documents of the intellectual history of the nineteenth cen
tury. Their recent reprinting, with an interesting introduc
tion by Dr F. R. Leavis, was valuable and timely. The
essays bring together what Mill called 'the two great semi
nal minds of England in their age', but the result, quite
evident in a reading of the essays, is a bringing together
not of two minds but of three. For to watch Mill being in
fluenced by, and correcting, Bentham and Coleridge is ab
sorbing and illuminating. We see not only the working of
an individual and most able mind, but a process which has
a general representative importance. Mill's attempt to ab
sorb, and by discrimination and discarding to unify, the
truths alike of the utilitarian and the idealist positions is,
after all, a prologue to a very large part of the subsequent
history of English thinking: in particular, to the greater part
of English thinking about society and culture.

If we look at the matter in this way, we shall avoid the
readiest mistake with regard to these essays; the mistake,
that is, of supposing that we are reading an impartial judge
ment of the ideas of Bentham and Coleridge, an authorita
tive summing-up by a great neutral. Miffs tone is always
so reasonable, and his professional skill in summary and
distinction so evident, that such a conclusion seems posi
tively invited. Yet the essays are not a judicial verdict; they
are the effort of a particular mind and a very distin
guished one to reconcile two deeply opposed positions.
Mill believed that by the exercise of reason and patience all
such differences could be resolved. Seeing the contrasted
positions, as was his habit, in an almost solely rational light,
he believed that reconciliation was possible, if only interest
and prejudice could be (as he thought not impossible) set

54 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

aside. But the essays are also an event, a particular stage,
in Mill's own intellectual development. Written in 1838 and
1840, they belong to a period when Mil's reaction against
Utilitarianism was at its most critical stage. The particular
balance or appearance of balance which he here achieved
was not afterwards fully maintained. The point is under
lined when we remember that his Utilitarian friends did
not see the essays as moving from the thesis of Bentham
through the antithesis of Coleridge to a new synthesis; they
saw them simply as apostasy, a surrender to 'German
mysticism*. They may well, narrow dogmatists, have been
wrong; but at least Mil did not impress them as a neutral.
Further, almost immediately after tibe essay on Coleridge,
Mill began moving away from the Coleridgian influence. In
his Political Economy 9 and especially in his Examination of
Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy* much of the assent here
granted to Coleridge is deliberately withdrawn.

We may suitably begin our more detailed examination of
the essays with a passage from the essay on Coleridge:

All students of man and society who possess that first
requisite for so difficult a study, a due sense of its dif
ficulties, are aware that the besetting danger is not so
much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistak
ing part of the truth for the whole. It might be plausi
bly maintained that in almost every one of the leading
controversies, past or present, in social philosophy,
both sides were in the right in what they affirmed,
though wrong in what they denied; and that if either
could have been made to take the other's views in ad
dition to its own, little more would have been needed
to make its doctrine correct. 1

It is worth noting how completely intellectualist is Mill's

method. For in life it is not whether the abstracted opin
ions of opposed thinkers might profitably complement each
other, to make what is caEed a 'correct* doctrine. We have
to ask, indeed, whether such a procedure would, even in
itself, be useful, considering its tendency to isolate the 'doc
trines' from those attachments, those particular valuations,
those living situations, in which alone the 'doctrines* can

MILL ON BENTHAM ANB COLERIDGE 55

be said to be active. The point is crucial, yet still the piety
of Mill's hope is genuine. It is worth watching his account
of the basic opposition:

Take for instance the question how far mankind have
gained by civilization. One observer is forcibly struck
by the multiplication of physical comforts; the ad
vancement and diffusion of knowledge; the decay of
superstition; the facilities of mutual intercourse; the
softening of manners; the decline of war and personal
conflict; the progressive limitation of the tyranny of the
strong over the weak; the great works accomplished
throughout the globe by the cooperation of multi
tudes: and he becomes that very common character,
the worshipper of 'our enlightened age'. 2

Here, fairly enough, is the abstract of Liberalism, and Mill
continues:

Another fixes his attention, not upon the value of these
advantages, but upon the high price which is paid for
them; the relaxation of individual energy and courage;
the loss of proud and self-relying independence; the
slavery of so large a portion of mankind to artificial
wants; their effeminate shrinking from even the
shadow of pain; the dull unexciting monotony of their
lives, and the passionless insipidity, and absence of any
marked individuality, in their characters; the contrast
between the narrow mechanical understanding, pro
duced by a life spent in executing by ixed rules a fixed
task, and the varied powers of the man of the woods,
whose subsistence and safety depend at each instant
upon his capacity of extemporarily adapting means to
ends; the demoralizing effect of great inequalities in
wealth and social rank; and the sufferings of the great
mass of the people of civilized countries, whose wants
are scarcely better provided for than those of the sav
age, while they are bound by a thousand fetters in lieu
of the freedom and excitement which are his com
pensations. 8

56 CULTUTRE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

This Is an aggregation of a number of kinds of criticism of

what Mill calls 'Civilization', but which, from the detail of
certain of its points, might better be called Industrialism.
Mill remarks:

No two thinkers can be more entirely at variance than
the two we have supposedthe worshippers of Civi
lization and of Independence, of the present and the
remote past. Yet all that is positive in the opinions of
either of them is true; and we see how easy it would
be to choose one's path, if either half of the truth were
the whole of it, and how great may be the difficulty of
framing, as it is necessary to do, a set of practical
maxims which combine both. 4

This sounds reasonable, but the opposed positions as de
scribed by Mill contradict each other not only in valuation
but, at certain points, in fact. The contrast is further con
fused by the inclusion of arguments which refer to different
periods of history. Part of the criticism inherent in the latter
position is criticism of the transition to industrialism; part
again the contrast, not of the village labourer and the in
dustrial worker, but of civilized man and Rousseau's Noble
Savage Mill's 'man of the woods'. It is then difficult to say
which of the many points is 'positively true', and the idea
of 'a set of practical maxims which combine both' seems
absurd. Mill is, in fact, gathering opinions, and arbitrarily
grouping them, rather than paying attention to the opposi
tion of values engendered by different orders of experience,
which arise from different ways of life. He is, at this point,
nowhere near any kind of lived reality. A Cobbett from one
position, a Coleridge from another, had their own views, in
experience, of the Thigh price paid for civilization'; but be
cause their experience was actual, they were specific about
the 'civilization'. Cobbett did not see 'the multiplication of
physical comforts' and 'the sufferings of the great mass of
the people* as opposing arguments; he saw them as aspects
of one and the same civilization, and therefore, in their very
contrast, a fact about the kind of civilization being experi
enced. Coleridge, in criticizing a 'narrow mechanical under
standing', had something better to refer to as a positive

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLEBJDGE 5/

than the 'man of the woods", about whom, after all, neither
Rousseau nor Mill nor anyone likely to take part in the

argument knew anything worth writing down; and whom
we should have to define rather more precisely (savage?
white trapper?) before we could say, even for the sake of
argument, whether he is a just symbol of Independence'.
I press these points because they show the degree to which
Mill is apt to divorce opinions and valuations both from
experience and from social reality.

He is on surer ground, and his normal grasp of his ma
terial returns, when he describes another opposition:

So again, one person sees in a very strong light the
need which the great mass of mankind have of being
ruled over by a degree of intelligence and virtue su
perior to their own. He is deeply impressed with the
mischief done to the uneducated and uncultivated by
weaning them of all habits of reverence, appealing to
them as a competent tribunal to decide the most in
tricate questions, and making them think themselves
capable, not only of being a light to themselves, but
of giving the law to their superiors in culture. He sees,
further, that cultivation, to be carried beyond a cer
tain point, requires leisure; that leisure is the natural
attribute of a hereditary aristocracy; that such, a body
has all the means of acquiring intellectual and moral
superiority; and he needs be at no loss to endow them
with abundant motives to it. 5

This summary is admirable. So too is Mill's exposition of the
objections to it:

But there is a thinker of a very different description,
in whose premises there is an equal portion of truth.
This is he who says, that an average man, even an
average member of an aristocracy, if he can postpone
the interests of other people to his own calculations
or instincts of self-interest, will do so; that all govern
ments in all ages have done so, as far as they were
permitted, and generally to a ruinous extent; and that
the only possible remedy is a pure democracy, in

58 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

which the people are their own governors, and can
have no selfish interest in oppressing themselves. 6

This is not the only line of objection to the former position,
but it is the one which we should expect Mill to follow, the
objection which would naturally occur to him, as one
trained in the Utilitarian kind of thinSdng. He goes on to
see the progress of this conflict of position in terms of the
swing of the pendulum:

Every excess in either direction determines a corre
sponding reaction; improvement consisting only in
this, that the oscillation, each time, departs rather less
widely from the centre, and an ever-increasing tend
ency is manifested to settle finally in it. T

It hardly needs emphasis that this view of the matter was
to become a commonplace: when in doubt, the English im
agine a pendulum. But still it is inadequate, since it is con
fined to the development of opinion and neglects the
changing relations of those actual forces in society which
seek to move in one or other direction. Yet Mill's statement
of the opposing political doctrines is much more adequate
than his exposition of what might be called the 'cultural*
objections to modem industrial civilization. The methods
and habits of Utilitarian thinking remained with him, even
when he was questioning certain Utilitarian positions, or
acknowledging the merits of positions reached in a differ
ent way. Consider, for instance, his famous distinction be
tween his subjects:

By Bentham, beyond all others, men have been led to
ask themselves, in regard to any ancient or received
opinion, Is it true? and by Coleridge, What is the
meaning of it? 8

This is just and illuminating, although we must not convict
Coleridge of any disregard for truth. Yet, taking the dis
tinction as it stands, there can be no doubt of the side on
which Mill himself stands. His critique of Bentham is
founded on the question, Is it true?:

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLERIDGE 59

But is tihds fundamental doctrine of Bentham's political

philosophy an universal truth? 9

This, at all important points, is the tone of the enquiry.
Similarly, with Coleridge, he is sifting for what he considers
true, and setting aside what is false. There is a point, of
course, at which one doubts whether there is any significant
difference between the questions Is it true? and What is
the meaning of it? But Mill's emphasis serves to underline
very clearly his own habit of approach.

Mill is nearer to Bentham than to Coleridge in funda
mentals. He is, by the same token, nearer to our own nor
mal habits of thinking. One result of the essays, certainly,
is a very damaging criticism of Bentham:

Knowing so little of human feelings, he knew still less
of the influences by which those feelings are formed:
all the more subtle workings, both of the mind upon
itself, and of external things upon the mind, escaped
him.; and no one, probably, who, in a highly instructed
age, ever attempted to give a rule to all human con
duct, set out with a more limited conception either of
the agencies by which human conduct is, or of those
by which it should be, influenced. 10

The comment is a personal one, on Bentham; but it has
normally been seized on, by those who are opposed to Utili
tarianism, as a general criticism of the system as a whole.
It has become, now, an element in that familiar criticism
of 'systematic' social thinkinga criticism which grounds it
self on the principle that the systematizers have an inade
quate knowledge of actual human nature. Mill is careful
not to make this extension himself, and indeed how could
he have done so? His own comment on himself lies too
ready to hand:

I never was a boy; never played at cricket; it is better
to let Nature have her way. 11

Or again:

Even in the narrowest of my then associates, they be
ing older men, their ratiocinative and nicely concate-

60 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

nated dreams were at some point or other, and in some
degree or other, corrected and limited by their experi
ence of actual realities, while I, a schoolboy fresh from
the logic school, had never conversed with a reality,
never seen one, knew not what manner of thing it was,
had only spun, first other people's and then my own
deductions from assumed premises. 12

The notorious education which James Mill imposed on his
son has been often abused, and with the support of texts
like these. When I read such comments, I want always to
enter the marginal note: 'yet the system, after all, produced
John Stuart Mill'. For good or illand surely, in the main,
it is for good the severe training produced a fine example
of a very fine kind of intelligence; that it is not the only
kind is agreed. Systematic enquiry into the working of hu
man institutions; systematic attempts to reform them, and
to devise techniques for their further reformation: these are
great positive human activities, and the objection to them,
on the title of Tiuman nature', is not, under its most com
mon auspices, very impressive. Mill, in emphasizing the
personal deficiencies of Bentham, is not thereby rejecting
the characteristic methods of Utilitarian thought. He is,
rather, applying himself to the problems of a new situa
tion, and a different one in certain radical respects from
that which Bentham had been concerned to meet. The ear
lier Utilitarianism had been a wholly adequate doctrine for
the rising middle class, seeking confirmation of its growing
power through reforms directed against the privileges of
the aristocracy. The doctrine had been coloured, through
out, by values appropriate to the new methods of produc
tion; it is true to say that this first period of Utilitarianism,
in England, served to create the political and social institu
tions correspondent to the first stages of the Industrial
Revolution. The climax of this effort was the Reform Bill
of 1832. Mill, writing in the years immediately following
the Bill, is concerned with the problems of the next phase,
Bentham had claimed that good government depended
upon the responsibility of the governors to

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLEB3DGE 6l

persons whose interest, whose obvious and recogniza
ble interest, accords with the end in view, 18

The Reform Bill had gone a long way toward securing this,
for that class which was directing the Industrial Revolu
tion. But now Mill saw tie inevitable extension o the prin
ciple, and that the 'numerical majority', whose 'obvious
and recognizable interest* was to be served, had to be dif
ferently defined. The new item on the agenda was com
plete political democracy, and Mill, seeing the logical jus
tice of this, from Bentham's premises as he understood
them, saw also what he took to be the dangers of extension:
in particular, a tyranny of opinion and prejudice-the 'will
of the majority* overriding and perhaps suppressing minor
ity opinion. When Cobbett had written his Last Hundred
Days of English Liberty., his concern had been with the
efforts of an authoritarian government to suppress the most
dangerous advocates of reform. When Mill came to write
his essay On Liberty, the emphasis had shifted and Mill
had moved with his times. The central concern, now, was
with the preservation of the rights of individuals and minor
ities against Public Opinion and the democratic State. And
it was here that he found Coleridge so useful to him, par
ticularly Coleridge's idea of the 'clerisy' a nationally en
dowed class,

for the cultivation of learning, and for diffusing its re
sults among the community. . . . We consider the de
finitive establishment of this fundamental principle to
be one of the permanent benefits which political sci
ence owes to the Conservative philosophers. 14

Mill grounded his defence of individual liberty on other
main arguments, but he saw the usefulness, against the tyr
anny of 'interest*, of so apparently disinterested a class.

Even more than the danger of majority tyranny, Mill saw
when he was writing these essays the danger consequent on
the success of the first period of the Industrial Revolution,
of the national life being dominated by laissez-faife com
mercialism:

62 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Bentham's idea of the world is that of a collection
of persons pursuing each his separate interest and
pleasure. 15

This was freedom, or individual liberty, not as Mill the in
tellectual had defined it, in terms of the freedom of thought,
but as the rising industrial class had defined it, with the
shadow of Bentham to support them, in terms of the free
dom 'to do as they willed with their own'. Faced with this,
Mill had to reconsider the bases of Utilitarian thought, and
he arrived, in consequence, at what is perhaps his central
judgement on Bentham:

A philosophy like Bentham's ... can teach the means
of organizing and regulating the merely business part
of the social arrangements. ... It will do nothing
(except sometimes as an instrument in the hands of a
higher doctrine) for the spiritual interests of society;
nor does it suffice of itself even for the material in
terests. . . . All he can do is but to indicate means by
which, in any given state of the national mind, the
material interests of society can be protected; saving
the question, of which others must judge, whether the
use of those means would have, on the national char
acter, any injurious influence. 16

Obviously, here, Coleridge's criticisms were relevant. There
were his famous questions, in the Constitution of Church
and State:

Has the national welfare, have the weal and happiness
of the people, advanced with the increase of the cir
cumstantial prosperity? Is the increasing number of
wealthy individuals that which ought to be understood
by the wealth of the nation? 17

Or again:

It is not uncommon for 100,000 operatives (mark this
word, for words in this sense are things) to be out
of employment at once in the cotton districts, and,
thrown upon parochial relief, to be dependent upon
hard-hearted taskmasters for food. The Malthusian

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLERIDGE 63

doctrine would indeed afford a certain means of relief,
if this were not a twofold question. If, when you say
to a man 'You have no claim upon me; you have your
allotted part to perform in the world, so have I. In a
state of nature, indeed, had I food, I should offer you
a share from sympathy, from humanity; but in this
advanced and artificial state of society, I cannot afford
you relief; you must starve. You came into the world
when it could not sustain you/ What would be this
man's answer? He would say *You disclaim all con
nection with me; I have no claims upon you? I can
then have no duties towards you, and this pistol shall
put me in possession of your wealth. You may leave
a law behind you which shall hang me, but what man
who saw assured starvation before him, ever feared
hanging?* It is this accursed practice of ever consider
ing only what seems expedient for the occasion, dis
joined from ail principle or enlarged systems of action,
of never listening to the true and unerring impulses of
our better nature, which has led the colder-hearted
men to the study of political economy, which has
turned our Parliament into a real committee of public
safety. In it is all power vested; and in a few years
we shall either be governed by an aristocracy, or, what
is still more likely, by a contemptible democratical oli
garchy of glib economists, compared to which the
worst form of aristocracy would be a blessing. 18

It is a useful reminder of the complexity of reactions in this
period to note that this comment of Coleridge's might al
most have been written by Cobbett; certainly the starting
point of the argument is one that Cobbett repeatedly used,
and the expected answer of the poor man is one that he
again and again emphasized.

What Mill seized on in Coleridge is fairly indicated by
the phrase 'disjoined from all principle or enlarged systems
of action'. For Mill was far too intelligent to suppose that
the deficiencies of a particular system here Benthamism-
were any sort of argument against system as such. There is
always a system of some kind: one system may be estab-

64 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

lished and therefore confused with permanent Tataman na
ture*; another system may challenge it and may be called,
because it is still in the stage of doctrine, dogmatic and
abstract The argument against system as such is either fret
ful or ignorant. What appealed to Mill, in his reconsidera
tion of Benthamism, was the emphasis implied in Cole
ridge's key word enlarged. He wanted principle, or enlarged
systems of action as an improvement on a system compe
tent only in 'the merely business part of the social arrange
ments', and insufficiently competent even in that. What
might this new principle, or enlarged system, be?

The peculiarity of the Germano-Coleridgian school is,
that they saw beyond the immediate controversy, to
the fundamental principles involved in all such contro
versies. They were the first (except a solitary thinker
here and there) who inquired with any comprehen
siveness or depth, into the inductive laws of the exist
ence and growth of human society. . . * They thus
produced, not a piece of party advocacy, but a philos
ophy of society, in the only form in which it is yet
possible, that of a philosophy of history; not a defence
of particular ethical or religious doctrines, but a con
tribution, the largest made by any class of thinkers, to
wards the philosophy of human culture. 19

The last word of this extract must be given the emphasis,

for indeed it is from the time of Coleridge on, as here so
ably recognized by Mill, that the idea of Culture enters
decisively into English social thinking. Mill continues:

The same causes [sc. as those which had led to the
new emphasis on historical studies] have naturally
led the same class of thinkers to do what their prede
cessors never could have done, for the philosophy of
human culture. For the tendency of their speculations
compelled them to see in the character of the national
education existing in any political society, at once the
principal cause of its permanence as a society, and the
chief source of its progressiveness: the former by the
extent to which that education operated as a system of

MILL ON BENTBAM AND COLERIDGE 6$

restraining discipline; the latter by the degree in which
it called forth and invigorated the active faculties. Be
sides, not to have looked upon the culture of the in
ward man as the problem of problems, would have
been incompatible with the belief which many of these
philosophers entertained in Christianity, and the rec
ognition by all of them of its historical value, and the
prime part which it has acted in the progress of man
kind. But here too, let us not fail to observe, they rose
to principles, and did not stick in the particular case.
The culture of the human being had been carried to
no ordinary height, and human nature had exhibited
many of its noblest manifestations, not in Christian
countries only, but in the ancient world, in Athens,
Sparta, Rome; nay, even barbarians, as the Germans,
or still more unmitigated savages, the wild Indians,
and again the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Arabs, all
had their own education, their own culture; a culture
which, whatever might be its tendency upon the
whole, had been successful in some respect or other.
Every form of polity, every condition of society, what
ever else it had done, had formed its type of national
character. What that type was, and how it had been
made what it was, were questions which the meta
physician might overlook, the historical philosopher
could not. Accordingly, the views respecting the vari
ous elements of human culture and the causes influ
encing the formation of national character, which per
vade the writings of the Germano-Coleridgian school,
throw into the shade everything which had been ef
fected before, or which has been attempted simultane
ously by any other school. Such views are, more than
anything else, the characteristic feature of the Goe-
thian period of German literature; and are richly dif
fused through the historical and critical writings of the
new French school, as well as of Coleridge and his
followers. 20

The emphasis on Culture, Mill decided, was the way to
enlarge the Utilitarian tradition. He looked back to the state

66 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

of affairs before the reforming movement into which he
had been born, and concluded:

This was not a state of things which could recommend
itself to any earnest mind. It was sure in no great
length of time to call forth two sorts of men the one
demanding the extinction of the institutions and creeds
which had hitherto existed; the other, that they be
made a reality: the one pressing the new doctrines to
their utmost consequences; the other reasserting the
best meaning and purposes of the old. The first type
attained its greatest height in Bentham; the last in
Coleridge. We hold that these two sorts of men, who
seem to be, and believe themselves to be, enemies, are
in reality allies. The powers they wield are opposite
poles of one great force of progression. What was
really hateful and contemptible was the state which
preceded them, and which each, in its way, has been
striving now for many years to improve. 21

Mill is simplifying, of course, when he speaks of alliance
between these *two sorts of men'. He is simpHfying, in the
way that is habitual to him, by abstracting the opinions
and the speculative intentions from the particular interests
and forces through which the opinions became active. Yet,
having recognized the value of Benthamite reform, he had
now found a way of expressing his conviction that the newly
reformed industrial civilization was narrow and inadequate.
Coleridge had worked out this idea of Culture, the court of
appeal to which all social arrangements must submit. We
must now look at this idea more closely, in certain passages
in the Constitution of Church and State which Mill does
not quote. First, in Coleridge's fifth chapter:

The permanency of the nation . . . and its progressive-
ness and personal freedom . . . depend on a continu
ing and progressive civilization. But civilization is itself
but a mixed good, if not far more a corrupting in
fluence, the hectic of disease, not the bloom of health,
and a nation so distinguished more fitly to be called a
varnished than a polished people, where this civiliza
tion is not grounded in cultivation, in the harmonious

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLERIDGE 67

development of those qualities and faculties that char
acterize our humanity. 22

Here, clearly, Coleridge is trying to set up a standard of
Tiealth', to which a more certain appeal may be made than
to the 'mixed good' of 'civilization'. He defines this standard
in the word cultivation the first time, in fact, that this word
had been used to denote a general condition, a 'state or
habit' of the mind. The word depends, of course, on the
force of the important eighteenth-century adjective culti
vated. What Coleridge here calls cultivation was elsewhere,
as in Mill, to be called culture.

Coleridge makes the same general point again at the end
of his discussion of the function of the National Church;

And of especial importance is it to the objects here
contemplated, that only by the vital warmth diffused
by these truths throughout the many, and by the guid
ing light from the philosophy, which is the basis of
divinity, possessed by the few, can either the commu
nity or its rulers fully comprehend, or rightly appre
ciate, the permanent distinction and the occasional
contrast between cultivation and civilization; or be
made to understand this most valuable of the lessons
taught by history, and exemplified alike in her oldest
and her most recent records that a nation can never be
a too cultivated, but may easily become an over-
civilized, race. 23

*The permanent distinction, and the occasional contrast*;
and Coleridge had already spoken of Cultivation as 'the
ground, the necessary antecedent condition, of both . . *
permanency and progressiveness'.

This idea of Cultivation, or Culture, was affirmed, by
Coleridge, as a social idea, which should be capable of em
bodying true ideas of value. Mill had written:

Man is never recognized by Bentham as a being capa
ble of pursuing spiritual perfection as an end. 24

That man was so capable, that the pursuit of perfection
was indeed his overriding business in life, was of course
widely affirmed elsewhere, especially by Christian writers.

68 CULTUKE AJSDD SOCIETY 1780-1950

But for Mill it was Coleridge who first attempted to define,
in terms of Ms changing society, the social conditions of
man's perfection. Coleridge's emphasis in his social writings
is on institutions. The promptings to perfection came in
deed from 'the cultivated heart' that is to say, from man's
inward consciousness but, as Burke before him, Coleridge
insisted on man's need for institutions which should con
firm and constitute his personal efforts. Cultivation, in fact,
though an inward was never a merely individual process.
What in the eighteenth century had been an ideal of per
sonalitya personal qualification for participation in polite
society had now, in the face of radical change, to be re
defined, as a condition on which society as a whole de
pended. In these circumstances, cultivation, or culture,
became an explicit factor in society, and its recognition con
trolled the enquiry into institutions.

We can now see that as a result of the changes in society
at the time of the Industrial Revolution, cultivation could
not be taken for granted as a process, but had to be stated
as an absolute, an agreed centre for defence. Against mech
anism, the amassing of fortunes and the proposition of
utility as the source of value, it offered a different and a
superior social idea. It became, indeed, the court of appeal,
by which a society construing its relationships in terms of
the cash-nexus might be condemned. Grounding itself on
an idea of

the harmonious development of those qualities and
faculties that characterize our humanity,

this general condition, Cultivation, could be taken as the
highest observable state of men in society, and the 'perma
nent distinction and occasional contrast* between it and
civilization (the ordinary progress of society) drawn and
emphasized. It was in this spirit that Coleridge examined
the constitution of the State, and proposed the endowment
within it of a class dedicated to the preservation and ex
tension of cultivation. In his general approach he follows
Burke; but where Burke had found the condition satisfied,
within the traditional organization of society, Coleridge
found the condition threatened, under the impact of

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLEKIDGE 69

change. In the face of the disintegrating processes of in
dustrialism, cultivation had now more than ever to be so
cially assured. The social idea of Culture, now introduced
into English thinking, meant that an idea had been formu
lated which expressed value in terms independent of 'civili
zation', and hence, in a period of radical change, in terms
independent of the progress of society. The standard of
perfection, of 'the harmonious development of those quali
ties and faculties that characterize our humanity', was now
available, not merely to influence society, but to judge it
The terms of Coleridge's proposals for an endowed class
whose business should be 'general cultivation* are worth
noting. He calls this class the Clerisy, or National Church,
which

in its primary acceptation, and original intention, com
prehended the learned of all denominations; the sages
and professors of ... all the so-called liberal arts and
sciences. 25

He saw this class as the third estate of the realm.

Now as in the first estate (landowners') the perma
nency of the nation was provided for; and in the second
estate (merchants and manufacturers) its progressive-
ness and personal freedom, while in the king the co
hesion by interdependence, and the unity of the coun
try, were established; there remains for the third estate
only that interest which is the ground, the necessary
antecedent condition, of both the former. 26

The maintenance of this Clerisy, whose care was thus the
'necessary antecedent condition' for both 'permanency' and
'progressiveness*, was to be assured by a specifically re
served portion of the national wealth, which Coleridge calls
the 'Nationalty'. This would be its establishment, as a Na
tional Church; but the Church was not to be understood
as only the 'Church of Christ*, for this would 'reduce the
Church to a religion*, and thence to a mere sect. Theology,
certainly, would give the 'circulating sap and life', but the
object of the class as a whole was general cultivation:

A certain smaller number were to remain at the foun-

7O CULTUKE AND SOCIETY

tainhead of the humanities, in cultivating and enlarg
ing the knowledge already possessed, and in watching
over the interests of physical and moral science; being
likewise the instructors of such as constituted, or were
to constitute, the remaining more numerous classes of
the order. The members of this latter and far more
numerous body were to be distributed throughout the
country, so as not to leave even the smallest integral
part or division without a resident guide, guardian,
and instructor; the objects and final intention of the
whole order being these to preserve the stores and to
guard the treasures of past civilization, and thus to
bind the present with the past; to perfect and add to
the same, and thus to connect the present with the
future; but especially to diffuse through the whole
community, and to every native entitled to its laws and
rights, that quantity and quality of knowledge which
was indispensable both for the understanding of those
rights, and for the performance of the duties corre
spondent. 27

The national property, which is to maintain this work,

cannot rightfully, and . . . without foul wrong to the
nation never has been, alienated from its original pur
poses. 28

Where there has been such alienation, the State may rightly
act to restore such property, and rededicate it to its original
uses. This will be done through the 'National Church', but
not necessarily through existing church organizations:

I do not assert that the proceeds from the Nationalty
cannot be rightfully vested, except in what we now
mean by clergymen and the established clergy. I have
everywhere implied the contrary. 29

The idea, in all its aspects, bears the peculiar stamp of
Coleridge's mind. In immediate terms, Mill's comment is
probably just:

By setting in a clear light what a national church es
tablishment ought to be . . .he has pronounced the
severest satire upon what in fact it is. 80

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLE3EODGE 71

Yet for Mill, and for us, the importance lies in the principle.
Mill found, then, in Coleridge, the enlarged system of
action which he felt to be necessary. It is probably true to
say that much of his later work is importantly affected by
this enlargement of principle, although the directions which
it took He at some distance from the directions of those
writers who consciously continued Coleridge's kind of en
quiry. Mill's later work is dominated by two factors: his
extension of the methods and claims of Utilitarian reform
to the interests of the rising working-class; and his effort to
reconcile democratic control with individual liberty. Such a
programme was, indeed, to initiate the subsequent main
line of English social thinking; its inluence, not only on the
Fabian kind of socialism, but on a wide area of character
istic modern legislation, is evident. No doubt Mill thought,
as it is common to think, that the idea of culture, which
had impressed him in Coleridge, was adequately provided
for, in terms of a social institution, by the extending system
of national education. In the latter half of the nineteenth
century, Mill is so sensible, on particular issues, where a
Carlyle or even a Ruskin is so patently absurd, that it is
easy for us to conclude that Mill's enlarged, Tiumanized*
Utilitarianism was in fact the best outcome that could have
been wished. Whether this is in fact so, whether this kind
of development is indeed valuable to us, must be discussed
at a later point in this enquiry, on the basis of our sub
sequent experience. What must be emphasized at this stage
is the way in which what Mill took from Coleridge differs
from what Coleridge himself offered: an emphasis which is
certainly necessary if we are to understand the subsequent
development of the idea of Culture. Mill uses the word
culture in another important context, when he is- describing,
in his Autobiography, the effect on him, at a time of emo
tional crisis, of Wordsworth's poems. These poems, he
writes,

seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I
was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a
source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative
pleasure, which could be shared in by all human be-

72 GUI/TUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

ings; which had no connexion with struggle or im
perfection, but would be made richer by every im
provement in the physical or social condition of
mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would
be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the
greater evils of life shall have been removed.* 1

Such a conclusion is obviously relevant to his earlier ac
count of the crisis itself:

In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the ques
tion directly to myself: 'Suppose that all your objects
in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions
and opinions which you are looking forward to, could
be completely effected at this very instant: would this
be a great joy and happiness to you?* And an irrepres
sible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 'No!' At
this my heart sank within me; the whole foundation
on which my life was constructed fell down. 82

Mill puts the situation so clearly that we all understand
him, and the movement of mind which he describes has,
I suppose, become characteristic. These paragraphs are
now the classical point of reference for those who decide
that the desire for social reform is ultimately inadequate,
and that art, the 'source of inward joy', is fortunately al
ways there as an alternative. But this very common posi
tion, whether in Mill or others, is rather doubtful. Mill is
recoiling from a solely rational organization of effort; this
is only a recoil from the desire for social reform when such
a desire has its roots in that kind of intellectual attachment.
Many men have, like the early Mill, based their social think
ing on that kind of attachment alone, and recoil under the
inevitable extension of experience is then natural enough.
The fact that, with sensitive men, the recofl takes the form
of Mill's kind of attachment to poetry is also understanda
ble. Poetry, as he describes it, is 'the very culture of the
feelings', but it is not only this; it has 'no connexion with
straggle or imperfection' that is to say, it is a separate,
ideal sphere. Democratic sentiments are retained: the pleas
ure will *be made richer by every improvement in the physi-

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLEBIDGE 73

cal or social condition of mankind'. Meanwhile, however, it
is not only a promise but a refuge, a source of contact with
'the perennial sources of happiness*. And this has become
a very common way of regarding poetry, and art in gen
eral, with the obvious implied judgement of the rest of
man's social activity.

The basic objection to this way of regarding poetry is
that it makes poetry a substitute for feeling. It does this
because the normal method of intellectual organization, in
minds of this kind, is a method which tends to deny the
substance of feelings, to dismiss them as 'subjective' and
therefore likely to obscure or hinder the ordinary march of
thought. If the mind is a 'machine for thinking', then feel
ing, in the ordinary sense, is irrelevant to its operations. Yet
the 'machine for thinking' inhabits a whole personality,
which is subject, as in Mill's case, to complex stresses, and
even to breakdown. Observing this situation, a mind or
ganized in such a way conceives the need for an additional
'department', a special reserve area in which f eeling can be
tended and organized. It supposes, immediately, that such
a 'department' exists in poetry and art, and it considers that
recourse to this reserve area is in fact an 'enlargement' of
the mind. Such a disposition has become characteristic, and
both the practice and the appreciation of art have suffered
from art being thus treated as a saving clause in a bad
treaty.

There were elements in the Romantic idea of poetry
which tended to indulge this kind of false attachment The
specialization of poetry to the function of *a culture of the
feelings' can be seen as part of the same movement of mind
which produced the characteristic rational narrowness of
Utilitarian thought. Feeling and thought, poetry and ra
tional enquiry, appeared to be antitheses, to be 'chosen' be
tween, or to be played off one against the other. But in
fact they were antitheses within a disruption: the confusion
of men haunted by this ghost of a 'mind*.

Coleridge, if Mfll had attended to him, could have made
this issue clear; made it clear, at least, as an issue, even if
his own method of organization could not have been trans
ferred. It was obviously impossible that Mill should realize

74 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Coleridge's kind of attachment to experience. A whole posi
tion like that of Coleridge cannot be offered for conviction;
it is not, and could not be, a suasive element. The most
that a man like Coleridge can offer is an instance, but, to
the degree that one realizes Coleridge's position, one real
izes also that an instance is indeed the most valuable thing
that can be offered. The kind of thinking which we observe
in Coleridge centres our attention, not on Mill's rationale of
a society, but, almost wholly, on the relations between per
sonal instance and social institution.

It is possible here only briely to indicate Coleridge's
fundamental approach. It is, perhaps, best described in a
characteristically complicated sentence from a letter to
Wordsworth:

In short, the necessity of a general revolution in the
modes of developing and disciplining the human mind
by the substitution of life and intelligence ... for the
philosophy of mechanism, which, in everything that is
most worthy of the human intellect, strikes Death, and
cheats itself by mistaking clear images for distinct con
ceptions, and which idly demands conceptions where
intuitions alone are possible or adequate to the maj
esty of the Truth. In short, facts elevated into theory
theory into laws and laws into living and intelligent
powers. 33

Or again:

The groundwork, therefore, of all true philosophy is
the full apprehension of the difference between the
contemplation of reason, namely, that intuition of
things which arises when we possess ourselves, as one
with the whole, which is substantial knowledge, and
that which presents itself when transferring reality to
the negations of reality, to the ever-varying framework
of the uniform life, we think of ourselves as separated
beings, and place nature in antithesis to the mind, as
object to subject, thing to thought, death to life. This
is abstract knowledge, or the science of the mere un
derstanding . , . which leads to a science of delusion

MILL ON BENTHAM AND COLEKIDGE 75

then only when it would exist for itself instead of being
the instrument of the former (that intuition of tilings
which arises when we possess ourselves as one with
the whole) instead of being, as it were, a translation
of the living word into a dead language, for the pur
poses of memory, arrangement, and general commu
nication. 34

The important distinction is between 'substantial knowl
edge' and 'abstract knowledge', but the function of the lat
ter is not denied, a function of 'memory, arrangement, and
general communication'. The contrast is not between 'think-
ing' and 'feeling', but between modes of both; the unity
of the substantial modes of either is insisted upon:

My opinion is this: that deep thinking is attainable
only by a man of deep feeling, and that all truth is a
species of revelation. . . . It is insolent to differ from
the public opinion in opinion, if it be only opinion? 5

By deep feeling we make our ideas dim, and this is
what we mean by our life, ourselves. 36

This elevation of the spirit above the semblances of
custom and the senses to a world of spirit, this lif e in
the idea, even in the supreme and Godlike, which
alone merits the name of life, and without which our
organic life is but a state of somnambulism; this it is
which affords the sole anchorage in the storm, and at
the same time the substantiating principle of all true
wisdom, the satisfactory solution of all the contradic
tions of human nature, of the whole riddle of the
world. This alone belongs to and speaks intelligibly to
all alike, the learned and the ignorant, if but the heart
listens. For alike present in all, it may be awakened
but it cannot be given. But let it not be supposed, that
it is a sort of knowledge. No! it is a form of being, or
indeed it is the only knowledge that truly is, and all
other science is real only as far as it is symbolical of
this. 87

Of course, when Coleridge passes from instance to formula-

76 CXJLTUTCE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

tion lie passes also into a more shadowy, and more debata
ble, activity. It is even possible to see how Mill made what
he did of Coleridge's attempts at systematization. There is
always in Coleridge a mixture of substantial and abstract
knowledge, by his own definitions, and at times, easily
enough, he mistook the one for the other. Yet in his major
emphases he offers something so radically different from
Bentham, and so different also from Mill's attempted 'en
largement*, that his influence is not to be construed as that
of a 'humanizing* check, but rather, for all its incomplete
ness of formulation, as an alternative conception of man and
society. Still, such a conception 'may be awakened, but it
cannot be given'.

It is from Coleridge, and later from Ruskin, that the con
struction of 'Culture' in terms of the arts may be seen to
originate. Yet this, also, is only a partial conclusion, for the
arts, essentially, are only a symbol for the kind of 'sub
stantial knowledge' which Coleridge sought to describe.
The same criterion is at least as necessary in other aspects
of our whole activity. Coleridge was indeed, as Mill de
scribed him, a 'seminal mind'; but the seed, like that of
the parable, has fallen on different kinds of ground. In Mill
himself, it produced what I have called 'humanized Utili
tarianism'. In Ruskin and Carlyle (in part working from
the same sources as Coleridge) it nourished a particular set
of social principles, very different from those of Mill, yet
also not without their influence on the subsequent develop
ment of society. Later again, it joined with the influence
of T. H. Green, and with the whole idealist school which
approached the question of the functions of the State in
ways which Coleridge would have recognized and valued.
Yet a seminal mind, when it is that of a Coleridge, is not
to be adequately judged by its solely intellectual harvest.
Independently of this, and independently even of some of
his own 'abstract knowledge', Coleridge has remained as
an instance, in experience, of the very greatest value:

I never before saw such an abstract of thinking as a
pure act and energy of thinking as distinguished from
thought. 38

CHAPTER IV

THOMAS CARLYLE

IN 1829, in the Edinburgh Review, Carlyle published his
important essay, Signs of the Times. The essay was his first
main contribution to the social thought of his time, yet it
is perhaps also his most comprehensive contribution. It is
a short essay, of little more than twenty pages, yet it states
a general position which was to be the basis of all Carlyle's
subsequent work, and which, moreover, was to establish it
self in the general thinking of many other writers, and as
a major element in the tradition of English social criticism.
It is not easy to distinguish the elements of influence
which coalesced in this decisive statement. The influence
of German thought in the preceding forty years is clear:
the immediately relevant names are Goethe, Schiller, Jean
Paul and Novalis. Carlyle had already read and written
widely in this Afield, and the essay on Novalis, for example,
written in the same year as Signs of the Times, shows evi
dent relations to it. The contrast of mechanical and dy
namic thinking is there, for instance, in a quotation from the
"Fragments in the second volume of the Novalis Schriften
which he was reviewing. Many of the other ideas, and
phrases, may be similarly traced. There are, again, signs of
the influence of Coleridge, who himself had gone to many
of the same sources, but had also individually developed
them. Carlyle had already met Coleridge at this time, and
the relation between the two men, if not always clear, is
substantial. Carlyle is more systematic, as he is also more
limited, than Coleridge: a hint from Coleridge becomes a
position in Carlyle. These and other influences must be ac
knowledged, yet the originality of Carlyle's essay is still not
essentially affected. The history of ideas is a dead study if
it proceeds solely in terms of the abstraction of influences.
What is important in a thinker like Carlyle is the quality
of his direct response: the terms, the formulations, the

78 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

morphology of ideas, are properly a secondary matter, and
as properly, also, the subject of influence. Carlyle is in this
essay stating a direct response to the England of his times:
to Industrialism, which he was the first to name: to the
feel, the quality, of men's general reactions that structure
of contemporary feeling which is only ever apprehended
directly; as well as to the character and conflict of formal
systems and points of view. Signs of the Times, as a phrase,
carries the right emphasis.

The essay, although known to students, is not as gen
erally known as it deserves to be. More than anything else
of Carlyle's, it requires quotation. We can begin with the
general description:

Were we required to characterize this age of ours by
any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not
an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age,
but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the
Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense
of that word. . . . Nothing is now done directly, or
by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. 1

This proposition is illustrated, first by reference to the
changes in methods of production:

On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his
workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one.
The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and
falls into iron fingers that ply it faster, 2

Then, there are the consequent social changes:

What changes, too, this addition of power is introduc
ing into the Social System; how wealth has more and
more increased, and at the same time gathered itself
more and more into masses, strangely altering the old
relations, and increasing the distance between the rich
and the poor, will be a question for Political Econo
mists, and a much more complex and important one
than any they have yet engaged with. 3

These are clear statements of a kind of analysis that has
continued and become familiar; it is easy, reading them, to

THOMAS CARLYLE 79

understand Marx's subsequent tribute to this aspect of Car-
lyle's work. But Garlyle continues his analysis, in another
direction, which Matthew Arnold, writing Culture and An
archy, could have acknowledged:

Not the external and physical alone is now managed
by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. . . .
The same habit regulates not our modes of action
alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are
grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in
hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour,
and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal per
fection, but for external combinations and arrange
ments, for institutions, constitutions for Mechanism of
one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their
whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mecha
nism, and are of a mechanical character. 4

As examples of this, Carlyle adduces the following:

An inward persuasion . . . that, except the external,
there are no true sciences; that to the inward world
(if there be any) our only conceivable road is through
the outward; that, in short, what cannot be investi
gated and understood mechanically, cannot be investi
gated and understood at all. 5

The mighty interest taken in mere political arrange
ments. . . . Were the laws, the government, in good
order, all were well with us; the rest would care for
itself! ... So devoted are we to this principle, and
at the same time so curiously mechanical, that a new
trade, specially grounded on it, has arisen among us,
under the name of 'Codification*, or code-making in the
abstract; whereby any people, for a reasonable con
sideration, may be accommodated with a patent code;
more easily than curious individuals with patent
breeches, for the people does not need to be measured
first. 6

Mechanism has now struck its roots down into man's
most intimate, primary sources of conviction; and is
thence sending up, over his whole life and activity,

80 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

innumerable stems fruit-bearing and poison-bearing.
. . . Intellect, the power man has of knowing and be
lieving, is now nearly synonymous with Logic, or the
mere power of arranging and communicating. Its im
plement is not Meditation, but Argument. . . . Our
first question with regard to any object is not, What
is it? but, How is it? ... For every Why we must
have a Wherefore. We have our little theory on aH
human and divine things. 7

Religion is now ... for the most part, a wise pru
dential feeling grounded on mere calculation . . .
whereby some smaller quantum of earthly enjoyment
may be exchanged for a far larger quantum of celestial
enjoyment. Thus Religion too is Profit, a working for
wages. 8

This veneration for the physically Strongest has spread
itself through Literature. . . . We praise a work, not
as 'true', but as 'strong'; our highest praise is that it
has 'affected' us. . . . 9

Our . . . 'superior morality' is properly rather an In
ferior criminality', produced not by greater love of Vir
tue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far
subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion. 10

In all senses, we worship and follow after Power. . . .
No man now loves Truth, as Truth must be loved, with
an infinite love; but only with a finite love, and as it
were par amours. Nay, properly speaking, he does not
believe and know it, but only 'thinks it', and that 'there
is every probability'l He preaches it aloud, and rushes
courageously forth with it if there is a multitude huz
zaing at his back; yet ever keeps looking over his
shoulder, and the instant the huzzaing languishes, he
too stops short. 11

These are the faults of the external attachment, when
viewed in the light of the inward claims. But;

To define the limits of these two departments of man's
activity, which work into one another, and by means

THOMAS CABLTLE 8l

of one another, so intricately and inseparably, were by
its nature an impossible attempt Their relative impor
tance. . . will vary in different times, according to the
special wants and dispositions of those times. Mean
while, it seems clear enough that only in the right co
ordination of the two, and the vigorous forwarding of
both, does our true line of action lie. Undue cultiva
tion of the inward or Dynamical province leads to idle,
visionary, impracticable courses. . . . Undue cultiva
tion of the outward, again, though less immediately
prejudicial, and even for the time productive of many
palpable benefits, must in the long-run, by destroying
Moral Force, which is the parent of all other Force,
prove not less certainly, and perhaps still more hope
lessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is the grand char
acteristic of our age. 12

Carlyle wants to see a restoration of balance, in the terms
he has set. He is writing, not a rejection of his time, but a
criticism of it:

These dark features, we are aware, belong more or less
to other ages, as well as to ours. This faith in Mecha
nism, in the all-importance of physical things, is in
every age the common refuge of Weakness and blind
Discontent. . . . We are aware also, that, as applied
to ourselves in all their aggravation, they form but half
a picture. . . . Neither, with all these evils more or
less clearly before us, have we at any time despaired
of the fortunes of society. Despair, or even despond
ency, in that respect, appears to us, In all cases, a
groundless feeling. We have a faith in the imperisha
ble dignity of man; in the high vocation to which,
throughout this his earthly history, he has been ap
pointed. . . . This age also is advancing. Its very un
rest, its ceaseless activity, its discontent contains mat
ter of promise. Knowledge, education are opening the
eyes of the humblest; are increasing the number of
thinking minds without limit. This is as it should be,
far not in turning back, not in resisting, but only in
resolutely struggling forward, does our Me consist.

8& CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

. . . There is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric
of society; a boundless grinding collision of the New
with the Old. The French Revolution, as is now visi
ble enough, was not the parent of this mighty move
ment, but its offspring. . . . The final issue was not
unfolded in that country: nay it is not yet anywhere
unfolded. Political freedom is hitherto the object of
these efforts; but they will not and cannot stop there.
It is towards a higher freedom than mere freedom
from oppression by his fellow-mortal, that man dimly
aims. Of this higher, heavenly freedom, which is 'man's
reasonable service*, all his noble institutions, his faith
ful endeavours and loftiest attainments, are but the
body, and more and more approximated emblem. 13

The criticism of the characteristics of the age is fundamen
tal, but the dominant tone, especially of these last para
graphs, is surely very surprising to a twentieth-century
reader. For us, now, such phrases as 'the imperishable dig
nity of man . . . the high vocation . . . resolutely strug
gling forward* are on one side of the argument; criticism
of the 'faith in mechanism* on the other. The former argu
ment now commonly neglects the criticism, while the latter,
as commonly, has purged itself of strength and hope. The
idea of balance is not usually one which suggests itself
when we are thinking of Carlyle; but there is genuine bal
ance in this essay, as well as a fine, and now rare, unity
of insight and determination. A man who began in this way
might well seem qualified to become the most important
social thinker of his century.

There was a time, of course, when it was quite widely
believed that this was in fact what Carlyle became. I sup
pose that no one believes this now, and certainly I do not
wish to argue that it is so. The insight lasted in all his
work; at his most savage he can still, on occasion, uncom
fortably penetrate our normal assumptions. The limitation,
as his life's work continued, is to be seen, primarily, in a
false construction of basic issues of relationship. In this he
is a victim of the situation which, in Signs of the Times,
he had described, *This veneration for the physically strong-

THOMAS CAHLYLE Sg

est has spread itself through Literature. . . . In all senses,
we worship and follow after Power': these are the marks'
of the sickness which Carlyle observed, and to which he
himself succumbed. The leading principle of all his later
social writing is the principle of the strong Leader, the
Hero, and the subjects who revere him. Carlyle, writing
himself, becomes the caricature of such a hero. He sees,
with a terrible clarity, the spiritual emptiness of the char
acteristic social relationships of his day, 'with Cash Pay
ment as the sole nexus' between man and man '. . . and
there are so many things which cash will not pay'. 14 The
perception disqualifies him, wholly, from acquiescence in
this construction of relationships; and he is therefore, with
out argument, a radical and a reformer. In this, however,
he is isolated, feels himself isolated: the existing framework
of relationships, the existing society, is against him, neces
sarily, because he is against it. He feels himself, in this
situation, cut off from all fruitful social relationships; he
has, in Burke's words, but by a force of circumstance which
Burke overlooked, 'nothing of politics but the passions they
excite'. 15 What he lacks, or feels himself to lack, is power;
and yet he is conscious of power; conscious, too, of the
superiority of his insight (which is not to be reduced to a
merely personal conceit) into the real problems of the day.
Under this tension the conclusion is not necessary, but it
has been reached again and again he construes the gen
erally desirable as what he personally desires; he creates
the image of the hero, 'the strong man who stands alone',
the leader, the leader possessed by vision, who shall be
listened to, revered, obeyed. It is usual to explain this con
clusion in terms of Carlyle's personal psychology: impo
tence projecting itself as power. But this, while relevant in
so far as it can be ascertained, does less than justice to the
representative quality of Carlyle's conclusion. The phe
nomenon is indeed general, and has perhaps been espe
cially marked in the last six or seven generations. The
explanation is mechanical unless we discriminate, very care
fully, about the purposes for which the power is wanted.
In Carlyle's case, essentially, the purposes are positive and
ennobling; the opposing normality, of the society which lie

84 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

wished to reform, is morally inferior to them in every way.
This indeed is the tragedy of the situation: that a genuine
insight, a genuine vision, should be dragged down by the
very situation, the very structure of relationships, to which
it was opposed, until a civilizing insight became in its opera
tion barbarous, and a heroic purpose, a Tiigh vocation*,
found its final expression in a conception of human relation
ships which is only an idealized version of industrial class-
society. The judgement, 'in all senses we worship and fol
low after Power', returns indeed as a mocking echo.

The larger part of Carlyle's writing is the imaginative
recreation of men of noble power. Lacking live men, we
enter a social contract with a biography. The writings on
Cromwell, on Frederick the Great, and on others, embody
this most curious of experiences: a man entering into per
sonal relations with history, setting up house with the il
lustrious dead. The more relevant writings, now, are the
essay on Chartism, the lectures on Hefoes and Hero-
Worship, the Latter-Day "Pamphlets, Past and Present,
and Shooting Niagara. Yet the unity of Carlyle's work is
such that almost everything he wrote has a bearing on his
main questions; his most complete analysis of Mechanism,
for example, is to be found in Sartor Resartus, and it is
there, also, in a brilliant passage, that he named Industrial
ism for us, and gave it its first definition.

The essay on Chartism, published in 1839, is a fine ex
ample of his developed method and convictions. Written
on the eve of the crisis of the Hungry Forties, it begins-
with characteristic insight:

We are aware that, according to the newspapers,
Chartism is extinct; that a Reform Ministry has *put
down the chimera of Chartism' in the most felicitous
effectual manner. So say the newspapers; and yet,
alas, most readers of newspapers know withal that it
is indeed the 'chimera* of Chartism, not the reality,
which has been put down. . . . The living essence of
Chartism has not been put down. Chartism means the
bitter discontent grown fierce and mad, the wrong
condition therefore or the wrong disposition, of the

THOMAS CARLYLE 8$

Working Classes of England. It is a new name for a
tning which has had many names, which will yet have
many. The matter of Chartism is weighty, deep-
rooted, far-extending; did not begin yesterday; will by
no means end this day or tomorrow. 16

After this recognition, and the parallel recognition that it
is no answer to call the discontent 'mad, incendiary, nefari
ous', Carlyle proposes the famous 'Condition-of-England*
question:

Is the condition of the English working people wrong;
so wrong that rational working men cannot, will not,
and even should not rest quiet under it? 17

It is Cobbett's question, and in Cobbetfs manner; and we
have only to set such a question in the context of what
passed in this period for political discussion to realize that
the firmness of it, the essential and central strength of it
now so easily taken for granted came by no kind of ac
cident, but from a man with the qualities so often praised
by Carlyle in others a man strong and reverent.

When Dickens came to write Hard Times, book in
which there is a great deal of Carlyle one of the things
against which he turned his mocking invective was the
procedure of systematic enquiry into just this 'Condition-of-
England question'-Mr Gradgrind's Observatory, with its
'deadly statistical clock'. It is a measure of the difference
between Carlyle and Dickens-an essential difference of hu
man seriousness that Carlyle makes no such trivial error.
He criticizes imperfect statistics, but his demand, rightly,
is for the evidence, for rational enquiry, so that the Legis
lature will not go on legislating in the dark'. The failure
to seek such evidence he sees, again rightly, as a symptom
of the spirit of laissez-faire. The essay becomes a full-scale
assault on the laissez-faire idea:

That self-cancelling Donothingism and Laissez-faire
should have got so ingrained into our Practice, is the
source of all these miseries. 18

86 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

This eighteenth-century doctrine, as Carlyle calls it,
straggled

still to prolong itself into the Nineteenth which, how
ever, is no longer the time for it! . . . It was a lucky
century that could get it so practised; a century which
had inherited richly from its predecessors; and also
which did, not unnaturally, bequeath to its successors
a French Revolution, general overturn, and reign of
terror; intimating, in most audible thunder, conflagra
tion, guillotinement, cannonading and universal war
and earthquake, that such century with its practices
had ended.

The movement of which the French Revolution was a part
is, however, not yet ended:

These Chartisms, Radicalisms, Reform Bill, Tithe Bill,
and infinite other discrepancy, and acrid argument
and jargon that there is yet to be, are our French Rev
olution: God grant that we, with our better methods,
may be able to transact it by argument alone. 20

Carlyle recognizes part of this movement as the struggle
for democracy. But to him, here as later, democracy is
merely a negative solution:

All men may see, whose sight is good for much, that
in democracy can lie no finality; that with the com-
pletest winning of democracy there is nothing yet won
except emptiness, and the free chance to win. 21

Carlyle sees democracy, in fact, as in one sense an expres
sion of the same laissez-faire spirit: a cancelling of order
and government, under which men can be left free to fol
low their own interests. Any such criticism of democracy,
read now, is only too likely to meet immediate prejudice;
we have all learned to shout 'fascist* at it. Yet the criticism
has a certain justice, and is, indeed, a most relevant criti
cism of that kind of democracy which, for example, reached
its climax in the Reform Bill of 1832. Whenever democ
racy is considered as solely a political arrangement, it is
open to Carlyle's charge. A large part of the spirit of de-

THOMAS CARLYLE 87

mocracy in our kind of society is in fact the spirit of laissez-
faire, extended to new interests and creating in consequence
new kinds of problem.

Carlyle's call is for government; for more government,
not less; more order, not less. This, lie represents, is the de
mand of the English working people; and in essence lie is
again right, and has continued right-the characteristic
movements of the English working class, while certainly
democratic in the wide sense, have been in the direction of
more government, more order, more social control. Carlyle,
however, interprets this demand in his own way:

What is the meaning of the 'five points', if we will un
derstand them? What are all popular commotions and
maddest bellowings, from Peterloo to the Place-de-
Greve itself? Bellowings, inarticulate cries as of a
dumb creature in rage and pain; to the ear of wisdom
they are inarticulate prayers: 'Guide me, govern me!
I am mad and miserable, and cannot guide myself I'
Surely of all 'rights of man", this right of the ignorant
man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forci
bly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputa-
blest. Nature herself ordains it from the first; Society
struggles towards perfection by enforcing and accom
plishing it more and more. If Freedom have any mean
ing, it means enjoyment of this right, wherein all other
rights are enjoyed. 22

In these last sentences, Carlyle is repeating a point that will
be remembered from Burke, and, characteristically, it is
again seen as the condition of 'Society struggling towards
perfection*. Where Burke, however, saw an adequate rul
ing class ready made, Carlyle saw only the dereliction of
duty by the governing classes in society. As his thinking
develops, and particularly in his later writings, his call is to
the classes with power to equip themselves for the right
exercise of power: to make themselves an active and re
sponsible governing class, and purge themselves of *donoth-
ingism'. The call was addressed by Carlyle to the aristoc
racy, but it was most heeded in the middle class, where it
became the basis of the appeal of reformers like Kingsley.

88 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

The call to the aristocracy was meanwhile noted by Dis
raeli; the relations between Carlyle's Chartism and Disrae
li's Sybil are very close.

Carlyle himself, more certainly in Chartism than else
where, had his own specific proposals. He was opposed, not
only to the general spirit of laissez-faire, but to what he
called Paralytic Radicalism, which, knowing the misery of
industrial England, can refer it only to 'time and general
laws'. He observes in his best manner:

They are an unreasonable class who cry 'Peace, peace',
when there is no peace. But what kind of class are
they who cry, 'Peace, peace, have I not told you that
there is no peace!' 23

Carlyle's proposals, against these 'practical men', are two:
first, popular education; second, planned emigration. The
latter, which had indeed been a specific since the first im
pact of Malthus, and which Cobbett, for good reasons, had
fiercely opposed, was to become a major element in re
formist feeling. It was, of course, the surplus working peo
ple who were to emigrate, under the leadership (literally)
of unemployed intellectuals and half-pay officers. The only
thing in this proposal that reflects credit on Carlyle is his
contingent contempt for the advice to 'stop breeding', again
addressed only to the working poor. He is as eloquent
against Malthus as Cobbett had been:

Smart Sally in our alley proves ail-too fascinating to
brisk Tom in yours: can Tom be called on to make
pause, and calculate the demand for labour in the
British Empire first? . . . O wonderful Malthusian
prophets! Millenniums are undoubtedly coming, must
come one way or the other; but will it be, think you,
by twenty millions of working people simultaneously
striking work in that department? 24

The other proposal, for Popular Education, was equally,
and more fortunately, influential. Carlyle is for practical be
ginnings: 'the Alphabet first' 'the indispensable beginning
of everything': handicraft . . . and the habit of the merest

THOMAS CARLYLE 89

logic'. These things must be done, even while recognizing
their inadequacy:

An irreverent knowledge is no knowledge; may be a
development of the logical or other handicraft faculty
inward or outward; but is no culture of the soul of a

man. 25

The reservation is important; it is the reservation which the
word culture was to embody, in criticism of many kinds of
education. But Carlyle insisted, nevertheless, that funda
mental, State-promoted education must be begun:

To impart the gift of thinking to those who cannot
think, and yet who could in that case think: this, one
would imagine, was the first function a government
had to set about discharging. 26

Education is thus the central theme of the general demand
for 'more government*.

The Chartism essay contains the greater part of what is
best in Carlyle's social thinking. In practical effect as in
the proposals for popular education and planned emigra
tionit is not really very different from Utilitarianism; and
in its call for more government it is a move in the same
direction as that which the second phase of radical Utili
tarianism was to take. The decisive emphasis is on the need
to transform the social and human relationships hitherto
dictated by the laws* of political economy. This emphasis,
humane and general, was in fact to be more influential than
Carlyle's alternative construction of heroic leadership and
reverent obedience.

After Chartism, the balance, or comparative baknce, of
Carlyle's first positions is lost. Past and Present is eloquent,
and the portrait of Abbot Samson and his mediaeval com
munity is perhaps the most substantial, as it is also the most
literal, of all the visions of mediaeval order which the critics
of nineteenth-century society characteristically attempted.
But, while it was possible to expose the deficiencies of In
dustrialism by contrast with selected aspects of a feudal
civilization, the exercise was of no help to Carlyle, or to
his readers, in the matter of perceiving the contemporary

QO CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

sources of community. The heroically drawn Samson, like
the figures celebrated in Heroes and Hero-Worship, under
lines the steady withdrawal from genuinely social thinking
into the preoccupations with personal power. In the Latter-
Day Pamphlets the decisive shift has taken place; it is to
the existing holders of power the Aristocracy, the 'Captains
of Industry' 27 that Carlyle looks for leadership in the re
organization of society; the call is only for them to fit them
selves for such leadership, and to assume it. By the time
of Shooting Niagara this call has become a contemptuous
absolutism, and the elements which made the former criti
cism humane have virtually disappeared. The recognition
of the dignity of common men has passed into the kind of
contempt for the 'masses' Swarmery, 'Sons of the Devil,
in overwhelming majority*, 28 iDlockheadism, gullibility,
bribeability, amenability to beer and balderdash' 29 which
has remained a constant element in English thought.

The idea of culture as the whole way of living of a people
receives in Carlyle a marked new emphasis. It is the ground
of his attack on Industrialism: that a society, properly so
called, is composed of very much more than economic re
lationships, with 'cash payment the sole nexus":

'Supply and demand' we will honour also; and yet
how many 'demands' are there, entirely indispensable,
which have to go elsewhere than to the shops, and
produce quite other than cash, before they can get
their supply. 80

The emphasis which Carlyle commonly gave to these other
lands of demand is closely related to his characteristic con
ception of the 'genius', the Tiero as man of letters'. He saw
the neglect of such a man, and of the values which he rep
resented, as a main symptom of the disorganization of so
ciety by the forces which elsewhere he attacked:

Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we
call the disorganized condition of society; how ill many
arranged forces of society fulfil their work; how many
powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic,
altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a com-

THOMAS CABLYLE gi

plaint, as we all know. But perhaps, if we look at this
o Books and the Writers of Books, we shall ind here,
as it were, the summary of all other disorganization;
a sort of hearty from which, and to which, all other
confusion circulates in the world. . . . That a wise
great Johnson, a Burns, a Rousseau, should be taken
for some idle nondescript, extant in the world to amuse
idleness, and have a few coins and applause thrown
in, that he might live thereby; this perhaps, as before
hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis of
things. Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always
that determines the material, this same Man-of-Letters
Hero must be regarded as our most important modern
person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all.
What he teaches, the whole world will do and make.
The world's manner of dealing with him is the most
significant feature of the world's general position. 31

The relation of this to the Romantic idea of the artist is
clear. Carlyle was a contemporary of the younger genera
tion of Romantic poets, and his views on this subject are
very similar to those of, say, Shelley. This can be readily
seen when Carlyle writes of his ^Man-of-Letters Hero':

Whence he came, whither he is bound, by what ways
he arrived, by what he might be furthered on his
course, no one asks. He is an accident in society. He

wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a world of which he
is as the spiritual light, either the guidance or the mis
guidance. 82

Carlyle's share in the formation of the characteristic mod
em idea of the artist (to use our own generic term) must,
then, be acknowledged. The specific development of this
idea as one of the main lines of criticism of the new kind
of industrial society must again be noted. It is here that the
idea of culture as the body of arts and learning, and the
idea of culture as a body of values superior to the ordinary
progress of society, meet and combine. Carlyle, even when
he appealed to the leadership of the aristocracy and cap
tains of industry, never failed to emphasize this other con-

Q2 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

ception of a 'spiritual aristocracy', a faigHy cultivated and
responsible minority, concerned to define and emphasize
the highest values at which society must aim. In the gen
eral anger of Shooting Niagara he warns this class to set
aside Poetry and Fiction, in order to 'write the History of
England as a kind of Bible*, and to concentrate on rethink
ing of our basic social assumptions. But this, although sig
nificant of Carlyle it is his own kind of work, as poetry was
Shelley's does not change the central emphasis, on the
need for a class of such men Writing and Teaching
Heroes' whose concern is with the quality of the national
life. This had been Coleridge's idea of the National Church,
the Clerisy. Carlyle, in different terms, makes the same
proposal, for an ^organic Literary Class'. He is not sure of
the best arrangements for such a class, but

If you ask, Which is the worst? I answer: This which
we now have, that Chaos should sit umpire in it; this
is the worst 33

It is not a question of 'money-furtherances' to individual
writers:

The result to individual Men of Letters is not the mo
mentous one; they are but individuals, an infinitesimal
fraction of the great body; they can struggle on, and
live or else die, as they have been wont. But it deeply
concerns the whole society, whether it will set its light
on high places, to walk thereby. ... I call this
anomaly of a disorganic Literary Class the heart of all
other anomalies, at once product and parent. 84

The idea of such an 6lite, for the common good of society,

has not been lost sight of, down to our own day. All that
now needs emphasis, with Carlyle as with Coleridge, and
as with Matthew Arnold after them, is that the then exist
ing organization of society, as they understood it, offered no
actual basis for the maintenance of such a class. The separa
tion of the activities grouped as 'culture* from the main
purposes of the new kind of society was the ground of
complaint:

THOMAS CAKLYLE 93

Never, till about a hundred years ago, was there seen
any figure of a Great Soul living apart in that anoma
lous manner; endeavouring to speak forth the inspira
tion that was in him by Printed Books, and find place
and subsistence by what the world would please to
give him for doing that. Much had been sold and
bought, and left to make its own bargain in the market
place; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul never
till then, in that naked manner. 35

This was the immediate criterion by which the faulty or
ganization, the narrow purposes, of the new society might
be perceived. It is in these terms, reinforced by more gen
eral conclusions, that Culture came to be defined as a sepa
rate entity and a critical idea.

Of Carlyle himself, much more might be said. He was
in every way so remarkable a man that the contrast be
tween the ideas which he deposited and the total experience
within which they had immediate meaning holds more
than the common irony. His influence was deep and wide,
and we shall catch many echoes of him as we proceed,
down to our own century. The faults, alike of the man and
of Jais influence, remain obvious. But there is one common
word of his which continues to express his essential quality:
the word reverence, not for him, but in Mm: the governing
seriousness of a living effort, against which every cynicism,
every kind of half -belief , every satisfaction in indifference,
may be seen and placed, in an ultimate human contrast.

CHAPTER V

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS

OUR understanding of the response to industrialism would
be incomplete without reference to an interesting group of
novels, written at the middle of the century, which not only
provide some of the most vivid descriptions of life in an
unsettled industrial society, but also illustrate certain com
mon assumptions within which the direct response was un
dertaken. There are the facts of the new society, and there
is this structure of feeling, which I will try to illustrate from
Mary Barton, North and South, Hard Times, Sybil, Alton
Locke, and Felix Holt.

Mart/ Barton (1848)

Mary Barton, particularly in its early chapters, is the most
moving response in literature to the industrial suffering of
the 18403. The really impressive thing about the book is
the intensity of the effort to record, in its own terms, the
feel of everyday life in the working-class homes. The
method, in part, is that of documentary record, as may be
seen in such details as the carefully annotated reproduction
of dialect, the carefully included details of food prices in
the account of the tea-party, the itemized description o
the furniture of the Bartons* living-room, and the writing-
out of the ballad (again annotated) of The Oldham
Weaver. The interest of this record is considerable, but the
method has, nevertheless, a slightly distancing effect. Mrs
Gaskell could hardly help corning to this life as an observer,
a reporter, and we are always to some extent conscious of
this. But there is genuine imaginative re-creation in her ac
counts of the walk in Green Heys Fields, and of tea at the
Bartons* house, and again, notably, in the chapter Poverty
and Death where John Barton and his friend find the starv
ing family in the cellar. For so convincing a creation of the

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS 95

characteristic feelings and responses of families of this land
(matters more determining than the material details on
which the reporter is apt to concentrate) the English novel
had to wait, indeed, for the early writing of D. H. Lawrence.
If Mrs Gaskell never quite manages the sense of full par
ticipation which would finally authenticate this, she yet
brings to these scenes an intuitive recognition of feelings
which has its own sufficient conviction. The chapter Old
Alice's History brilliantly dramatizes the situation of that
early generation brought from the villages and the country
side to the streets and cellars of the industrial towns. The
account of Job Legh, the weaver and naturalist, vividly em
bodies that other kind of response to an urban industrial
environment; the devoted, lifelong study of living creatures
a piece of amateur scientific work, and at the same time
an instinct for living creatures which hardens, by its very
contrast with its environment, into a kind of crankiness. In
the factory workers walking out in spring into Green Keys
Fields; in Alice Wilson, remembering in her cellar the ling-
gathering for besoms in the native village that she will never
again see; in Job Legh, intent on his impaled insects these
early chapters embody the characteristic response of a gen
eration to the new and crushing experience of industrialism.
The other early chapters movingly embody the continuity
and development of the sympathy and cooperative instinct
which were already establishing a main working-class
tradition.

The structure of feeling from which Mary Barton begins
is, then, a combination of sympathetic observation and of a
largely successful attempt at imaginative identification. If
it had continued in this way, it might have been a great
novel of its kind. But the emphasis of the method changes,
and there are several reasons for this. One reason can be
studied in a curious aspect of the history of the writing of
the book. It was originally to be called John Barton. As
Mrs Gaskell wrote later:

Round the character of John Barton all the others
formed themselves; he was my hero, the person with
whom all my sympathies went. 1

96 OOTLTtmE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

And she added:

The character, and some of the speeches, are exactly a

poor man I know. 1

The change of emphasis which the book subsequently un
derwent, and the consequent change of title to Mary Bar
ton, seem to have been made at the instance of her pub
lishers, Chapman and Hall. The details of this matter are
still obscure, but we must evidently allow something for
this external influence on the shape of the novel. Certainly
the John Barton of the later parts of the book is a very
shadowy figure. In committing the murder, he seems to put
himself not only beyond the range of Mrs GaskelFs sym
pathy (which is understandable), but, more essentially,
beyond the range of her powers. The agony of conscience
is there, as a thing told and sketched, but, as the crisis of
"my hero; the person with whom all my sympathies went',
it is weak and almost incidental. This is because the novel
as published is centred on the daughter her indecision be
tween Jem Wilson and Tier gay lover, Harry Carson'; her
agony in Wilson's trial; her pursuit and last-minute rescue
of the vital witness; the realization of her love for Wilson:
all this, the familiar and orthodox plot of the Victorian novel
of sentiment, but of little lasting interest. And it now seems
incredible that the novel should ever have been planned
in any other way. If Mrs Gaskell had written 'round the
character of Mary Barton all the others formed themselves',
she would have confirmed our actual impression of the fin
ished book.

Something must be allowed for the influence of her pub
lishers, but John Barton must always have been cast as the
murderer, with the intention perhaps of showing an essen
tially good man driven to an appalling crime by loss, suffer
ing and despair. One can still see the elements of this in the
novel as we have it, but there was evidently a point, in its
writing, at which the flow of sympathy with which she be
gan was arrested, and then, by the change of emphasis
which the change of title records, diverted to the less com
promising figure of the daughter. The point would be less
important if it were not characteristic of the structure of

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS 97

feeling within which she was working. It is not only that she
recoils from the violence of the murder, to the extent of
being unable even to enter it as the experience of the man
conceived as her hero. It is also that, as compared with the
carefully representative character of the early chapters, the
murder itself is exceptional. It is true that in 1831 a Thomas
Ashton, of Pole Bank, Werneth, was murdered under some
what similar circumstances, and that the Ashton family ap
pear to have taken the murder of Carson as referring to
this. Mrs Gaskell, disclaiming the reference in a letter to
them, turned up some similar incidents in Glasgow at about
the same time. But in fact, taking the period as a whole,
the response of political assassination is so uncharacteristic
as to be an obvious distortion. The few recorded cases only
emphasize this. Even when one adds the cases of intimida
tion, and the occasional vitriol-throwing during the deliber
ate breaking of strikes, it remains true, and was at the time
a subject of surprised comment by foreign observers, that
the characteristic response of the English working people,
even in times of grave suffering, was not one of personal
violence. Mrs Gaskell was under no obligation to write a
representative novel; she might legitimately have taken a
special case. But the tone elsewhere is deliberately repre
sentative, and she is even, as she says, modelling John Bar
ton on *a poor man I know'. The real explanation, surely, is
that John Barton, a political murderer appointed by a trade
union, is a dramatization of the fear of violence which was
widespread among the upper and middle classes at the
time, and which penetrated, as an arresting and controlling
factor, even into the deep imaginative sympathy of a Mrs
Gaskell. This fear that the working people might take mat
ters into their own hands was widespread and characteris
tic, and the murder of Harry Carson is an imaginative
working-out of this fear, and of reactions to it, rather than
any kind of observed and considered experience.

The point is made clearer when it is remembered that
Mrs Gaskell planned the murder herself, and chose, for tibe
murderer, *my hero, the person with whom all my sympa
thies went'. In this respect the act of violence, a sudden
aggression against a man contemptuous of the sufferings of

98 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

the poor, looks very much like a projection, with which,
in the end, she was unable to come to terms. The imagina
tive choice of the act of murder and then the imaginative
recoil from it have the effect of raining the necessary in
tegration of feeling in the whole theme. The diversion to
Mary Barton, even allowing for the publishers' influence,
must in fact have been welcome.

Few persons felt more deeply than Elizabeth Gaskell the
sufferings of the industrial poor. As a minister's wife in
Manchester, she actually saw this, and did not, like many
other novelists, merely know it by report or occasional
visit. Her response to the suffering is deep and genuine, but
pity cannot stand alone in such a structure of feeling. It is
joined, in Mary Barton, by the confusing violence and fear
of violence, and is supported, finally, by a kind of writing-
off, when the misery of the actual situation can no longer
be endured. John Barton dies penitent, and the elder Carson
repents of his vengeance and turns, as the sympathetic ob
server wanted the employers to turn, to efforts at improve
ment and mutual understanding. This was the character
istic humanitarian conclusion, and it must certainly be
respected. But it was not enough, we notice, for the persons
with whom Mrs GaskelTs sympathies were engaged. Mary
Barton, Jern Wilson, Mrs Wilson, Margaret, Will, Job Legh
all the objects of her real sympathy end the book far re
moved from the situation which she had set out to examine.
All are going to Canada; there could be no more devastat
ing conclusion. A solution within the actual situation might
be hoped for, but the solution with which the heart went
was a cancelling of the actual difficulties and the removal
of the persons pitied to the uncompromised New World.

North and South (1855)

Mrs GaskelTs second industrial novel, North and South,
is less interesting, because the tension is less. She takes up
here her actual position, as a sympathetic observer. Mar
garet Hale, with the feelings and upbringing of the daugh
ter of a Southern clergyman, moves with her father to
industrial Lancashire, and we follow her reactions, her ob-

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS OQ

servations and her attempts to do what good she can. Be
cause this is largely Mrs GaskelTs own situation, the in
tegration of the book is markedly superior. Margaref s
arguments with the mill-owner Thornton are interesting and
honest, within the political and economic conceptions of
the period. But the emphasis of the novel, as the lengthy
inclusion of such arguments suggests, is almost entirely now
on attitudes to the working people, rather than on the at
tempt to reach, imaginatively, their feelings about their
lives. It is interesting, again, to note the manner of the
working-out. The relationship of Margaret and Thornton
and their eventual marriage serve as a unification of the
practical energy of the Northern manufacturer with the
developed sensibility of the Southern girl: this is stated al
most explicitly, and is seen as a solution. Thornton goes back
to the North

to have the opportunity of cultivating some intercourse
with the hands beyond the mere 'cash nexus', 2

Humanized by Margaret, he will work at what we now call
'the improvement of human relations in industry'. The con
clusion deserves respect, but it is worth noticing that it is
not only under Margaret's influence that Thornton will at
tempt this, but under her patronage. The other manu
facturers, as Thornton says, "will shake their heads and look
grave' at it. This may be characteristic, but Thornton,
though bankrupt, can be the exception, by availing himself
of Margaret's unexpected legacy. Money from elsewhere, in
fact by that device of the legacy which solved so many
otherwise insoluble problems in the world of the Victorian
novel will enable Thornton, already affected by the supe
rior gentleness and humanity of the South, to make his
humanitarian experiment. Once again Mrs Gaskell works
out her reaction to the insupportable situation by going
in part adventitiously outside it.

Hard Times (1854)

Ordinarily Dickens's criticisms of the world he lives in
are casual and incidental a matter of including among

1OO CTTLTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

the ingredients of a book some indignant treatment of
a particular abuse. But in Hard Times he is for once
possessed by a comprehensive vision, one in which the
inhumanities of Victorian civilization are seen as fos
tered and sanctioned by a hard philosophy, the ag
gressive formulation of an inhumane spirit. 3

This comment by F. R. Leavis on Hard Times serves to
distinguish Dickens's intention from that of Mrs Gaskell in
Mary Barton. Hard Times is less imaginative observation
than an imaginative judgement. It is a judgement of social
attitudes, but again it is something more than North and
South. It is a thorough-going and creative examination of
the dominant philosophy of industrialism of the hardness
that Mrs Gaskell saw as little more than a misunderstand
ing, which might be patiently broken down. That Dickens
could achieve this more comprehensive understanding is
greatly to the advantage of the novel. But against this we
must set the fact that in terms of human understanding of
the industrial working people Dickens is obviously less suc
cessful than Mrs Gaskell: his Stephen Blackpool, in relation
to the people of Mary Barton, is little more than a diagram
matic figure. The gain in comprehension, that is to say, has
been achieved by the rigours of generalization and abstrac
tion; Hard Times is an analysis of Industrialism, rather than
experience of it.

The most important point, in this context, that has to be
made about Hard Times is a point about Thomas Grad-
grind. Josiah Bounderby, the other villain of the piece, is a
simple enough case. He is, with rough justice, the embodi
ment of the aggressive money-making and power-seeking
ideal which was a driving force of the Industrial Revolu
tion. That he is also a braggart, a liar and in general per
sonally repellent is of course a comment on Dickens's
method. The conjunction of these personal defects with the
aggressive ideal is not (how much easier things would be
if it were) a necessary conjunction. A large part of the Vic
torian reader's feelings against Bounderby (and perhaps a
not inconsiderable part of the twentieth-century intellec
tual's) rests on the older and rather different feeling that

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS 1O1

trade, as such, is gross. The very name (and Dickens uses
his names with conscious and obvious effect) , incorporating
bounder, incorporates this typical feeling. The social criti
cism represented by bounder is, after all, a rather different
matter from the question of aggressive economic individu
alism. Dickens, with rough justice, fuses the separate reac
tions, and it is easy not to notice how one set of feelings is
made to affect the other.

The difficulty about Thomas Gradgrind is different in
character. It is that the case against him is so good, and his
refutation by experience so masterly, that it is easy for the
modern reader to forget exactly what Gradgrind is. It is
surprising how common is the mistake of using the remem
bered name, Gradgrind, as a class-name for the hard Vic
torian employer. The valuation which Dickens actually
asks us to make is more difficult. Gradgrind is a Utilitarian:
seen by Dickens as one of the feeloosofers against whom
Cobbett thundered, or as one of the steam-engine intellects
described by Carlyle. This line is easy enough, but one
could as easily draw another: say, Thomas Gradgrind, Ed
win Chadwick, John Stuart Mill. Chadwick, we are told,
was 'the most hated man in England', and he worked by
methods, and was blamed for 'meddling*, in terms that are
hardly any distance from Dickens's Gradgrind. Mill is a
more difficult instance (although the education of which he
felt himself a victim will be related, by the modern reader,
to the Gradgrind system) . But it seems certain that Dickens
has Mil's Political Economy (1849) verv much in mind in
his general indictment of the ideas which built and main
tained Coketown. (Mill's reaction, it may be noted, was the
expressive 'that creature Dickens'. 4 ) It is easy now to real
ize that Mill was something more than a Gradgrind. But
we are missing Dickens's point if we fail to see that in con
demning Thomas Gradgrind, the representative figure, we
are invited also to condemn the kind of thinking and the
methods of enquiry and legislation which in fact promoted
a large measure of social and industrial reform. One won
ders, for example, what a typical Fabian feels when he is
invited to condemn Gradgrind, not as an individual but as
a type. This may, indeed, have something to do with the

1O2 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

common error of memory about Gradgrind to which I have
referred. Public commissions, Blue Books, Parliamentary
legislation all these, in the world of Hard Timesaxe
Gradgrindery.

For Dickens is not setting Reform against Exploitation.
He sees what we normally understand by both as two sides
of the same coin, Industrialism. His positives do not lie in
social improvement, but rather in what he sees as the ele
ments of human nature personal kindness, sympathy, and
forbearance. It is not the model factory against the satanic
mill, nor is it the humanitarian experiment against selfish
exploitation. It is, rather, individual persons against the
System. In so far as it is social at all, it is the Circus against
Coketown. The schoolroom contrast of Sissy Jupe and Bitzer
is a contrast between the education, practical but often in
articulate, which is gained by living and doing, and the
education, highly articulated, which is gained by systemi-
zation and abstraction. It is a contrast of which Cobbett
would have warmly approved; but in so far as we have all
(and to some extent inevitably) been committed to a large
measure of the latter, it is worth noting again what a large
revaluation Dickens is asking us to make. The instinctive,
unintellectual, unorganized life is the ground, here, of gen
uine feeling, and of all good relationships. The Circus is one
of the very few ways in which Dickens could have drama
tized this, but it is less the circus that matters than the ex
perience described by Sleary:

that there ith a love in the world, not all Thelf-
interetht after all, but thomething very different . . .
it hath a way of ith own of calculating or not calculat
ing, which thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard
to give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith. 5

It is a characteristic conclusion, in a vitally important tradi
tion which based its values on such grounds. It is the major
criticism of Industrialism as a whole way of life, and its
grounds in experience have been firm. What is essential is
to recognize that Dickens saw no social expression of it, or
at least nothing that could be 'given a name to'. The ex
perience is that of individual persons. Almost the whole or-

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS 103

ganization of society, as Dickens judges, is against it. The

Circus can express it because it is not part of the industrial
organization. The Circus is an end in itself, a pleasurable
end, which is instinctive and (in certain respects) anarchic.
It is significant that Dickens has thus to go outside the
industrial situation to find any expression of his values. This
going outside is similar to the Canada in which Mart/ Barton
ends, or the legacy of Margaret Hale. But it is also more
than these, in so far as it is not only an escape but a positive
assertion of a certain kind of experience, the denial of which
was the real basis (as Dickens saw it) of the hard times,
It was inevitable, given the kind of criticism that Dickens
was making, that his treatment of the industrial working
people should have been so unsatisfactory. He recognizes
them as objects of pity, and he recognizes the personal de
votion in suffering of which they are capable. But the only
conclusion he can expect them to draw is Stephen Black
pool's:

Aw a muddle! 6

This is reasonable, but the hopelessness and passive suffer
ing are set against the attempts of the working people to
better their conditions. The trade unions are dismissed by a
stock Victorian reaction, with the agitator Slackbridge.
Stephen Blackpool, like Job Legh, is shown to advantage
because he will not join them. The point can be gauged
by a comparison with Cobbett, whose criticism of the Sys
tem is in many ways very similar to that of Dickens, and
rests on so many similar valuations, yet who was not simi
larly deceived, even when the trade unions came as a nov
elty to him. The point indicates a wider comment on Dick-
ens's whole position.

The scathing analysis of Coketown and all its works, and
of the supporting political economy and aggressive utilitar
ianism, is based on Carlyle. So are the hostile reactions to
Parliament and to ordinary ideas of reform. Dickens takes
up the hostility, and it serves as a comprehensive vision, to
which he gives all his marvellous energy. But his identifica
tion with Carlyle is really negative. There are no social al
ternatives to Bounderby and Gradgrrnd: not the time-

104 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

serving aristocrat Harthouse; not the decayed gentlewoman
Mrs Sparsit; nowhere, in fact, any active Hero. Many of
Dickens's social attitudes cancel each other out, for he will
use almost any reaction in order to undermine any normal
representative position. Hard Times, in tone and structure,
is the work of a man who has 'seen through* society, who
has found them al out. The only reservation is for the pas
sive and the suffering, for the meek who shall inherit the
earth but not Coketown, not industrial society. This primi
tive feeling, when joined by the aggressive conviction of
having found everyone else out, is the retained position of
an adolescent. The innocence shames the adult world, but
also essentially rejects it. As a whole response, Hard Times
is more a symptom of the confusion of industrial society
than an understanding of it, but it is a symptom that is sig
nificant and continuing.

Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845)

Sybil can be read now as the production of a future Con
servative Prime Minister, and hence in the narrow sense as
a political novel. The elements of political pleading are in
deed evident in any reading of it. Their curiosity, their
partisanship and their opportunism are matched only by
their brilliance of address. The novel would be fascinating
if it were only political. The stucco elegance of Disraeli's
writing has a consonance with one kind of political argu
ment. What is intolerable in his descriptions of persons and
feelings becomes in his political flights a rather likeable
panache. The descriptions of industrial squalor are very like
those of Dickens on Coketown: brilliant romantic generali
zationsthe view from the train, from the hustings, from
the printed page yet often moving, like all far-seeing
rhetoric. There are similar accounts of the conditions of the
agricultural poor which need to be kept in mind against
the misleading contrasts of North and South. Again, in a
quite different manner, there is in Sybil the most spirited de
scription of the iniquities of the tommy-shop, and of the
practical consequences of the system of truck, to be found
anywhere. Disraeli's anger the generalized anger of an out-

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS 10$

sider making his waycarries lam often beyond his formal
text. The hostile descriptions of London political and social
life are again generalization, but they have, doubtless, the
same rhetorical significance as those of the forays among
the poor. Anyone who is prepared to give credit to Disraeli's
unsupported authority on any matter of social fact has of
course mistaken his man, as he would similarly mistake
Dickens. But Disraeli, like Dickens, is a very fine general
izing analyst of cant, and almost as fine a generalizing
rhetorician of human suffering. Both functions, it must be
emphasized, are reputable.

In terms of ideas, Sybil is almost a collector's piece. There
is this, for instance, from Coleridge:

But if it have not furnished us with abler administra
tion or a more illustrious senate, the Reform Act may
have exercised on the country at large a beneficial in
fluence? Has it? Has it elevated the tone of the public
mind? Has it cultured the popular sensibilities to noble
and ennobling ends? Has it proposed to the people of
England a higher test of national respect and confi
dence than the debasing qualification universally prev
alent in this country since the fatal introduction of the
system of Dutch finance? Who will pretend it? If a
spirit of rapacious covetousness, desecrating all the hu
manities of Me, has been the besetting sin of England
for the last century and a half, since the passing of the
Reform Act the altar of Mammon has blazed with
triple worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder
each oilier by virtue of philosophic phrases, to propose
a Utopia to consist only of WEALTH and TOIL, this
has been the breathless business of enfranchised Eng
land for the last twelve years, until we are startled from
our voracious strife by the wail of intolerable serfage. 7

It is true that this is political, a part of the grand assault on
Whiggery. But the terms of the assault are familiar, as part
of a much wider criticism. Or again this, which was to re
appear in our own century with an air of original discovery:

*. . . There is no community in England; there is ag-

106 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

gregation, but aggregation under circumstances which
make it rather a dissociating than a uniting principle.
. It is a community of purpose that constitutes so
ciety . . . without that, men may be drawn into con
tiguity, but they still continue virtually isolated/
'And is that their condition in cities?'
'It is their condition everywhere; but in cities that
condition is aggravated. A density of population im
plies a severer struggle for existence, and a consequent
repulsion of elements brought into too close contact.
In great cities men are brought together by the desire
of gain. They are not in a state of cooperation, but of
isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all
the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity
teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself ; modern
society acknowledges no neighbour/ 8

These views of the Chartist Stephen Morley were the com
mon element in a number of varying political positions.
They have remained the terms of a basic criticism of In
dustrialism.

The two nations, of rich and poor, have of course become
famous. The basis of the attempt to make one nation of them
is the restoration to leadership of an enlightened aristoc
racy. For,

'There is a change in them, as in all other tihings/
. . . said Egremont.

Tf there be a change/ said Sybil, It is because in
some degree the people have learnt their strength/

AhI dismiss from your mind those fallacious fancies/
said Egremont. "The people are not strong; the peo
ple never can be strong. Their attempts at self -vindica
tion will end only in their suffering and confusion/ 9

It is, of course, the familiar injunction, in Cobbett's words,
to *be quief, and the familiar assumption of the business of
regeneration by others in this case 'the enlightened aristoc
racy*. Disraeli shared the common prejudices about the
popular movement: his account of the initiation of Dandy
Mick into a Trade Union

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS 10/

*. . . you will execute with zeal and alacrity ... ev
ery task and injunction that the majority of your breth
ren . . . shall impose upon you, in furtherance of our
common welfare, of which they are the sole judges:
such as the chastisement of Nobs, the assassination of
oppressive and tyrannical masters, or the demolition of
aE mills, works and shops that shall be deemed by us
incorrigible/ 10

is characteristically cloak-and-dagger. This must be ac
knowledged alongside the shrewder assessment;

The people she found was not that pure embodiment
of unity of feeling, of interest, and of purpose which
she had pictured in her abstractions. The people had
enemies among the people: their own passions; which
made them often sympathize, often combine, with the
privileged. 11

This shrewdness might well have been also applied to some
of Disraeli's other abstractions, but perhaps that was left
for later, in the progress of his political career.

The passages quoted are near the climax of that uniting
of Egremont, 'the enlightened aristocrat', and Sybil, 'the
daughter of the People', which, in the novel, is the symbolic
creation of the One Nation. This, again, is the way the heart
goes, and it is the novel's most interesting illustration. For
Sybil, of course, is only theoretically 'the daughter of the
People'. The actual process of the book is the discovery that
she is a dispossessed aristocrat, and the marriage bells ring,
not over the achievement of One Nation, but over the unit
ing of the properties of Marney and Mowbray, one agricul
tural, the other industrial: a marriage symbolical, indeed,
of the political development which was the actual issue.
The restored heiress stands, in the general picture, with
Margaret Thornton's legacy, with Canada, and with the
Horse-Riding. But it is significant of Disraeli's shrewdness
that, through the device, he embodied what was to become
an actual political event.

1O8 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet (1850)

In part, Alton Locke is in the orthodox sense an 'expo
sure*: an informed, angry and sustained account of sweated
labour in the 'Cheap and Nasty' clothing trade. Much of it
can still be read in these terms, with attention and sym
pathy. It is fair to note, however, that in respect of this
theme the Preface is more effective than the novel, and for
the unexpected reason that it is more specific.

The wider intention of the book is rather different. It is
really a story of conversion: of the making of a Chartist in
the usual sense, and of his remaking in Kingsley's sense.
This is the basic movement in a book which is extremely
discursive in mood. The earlier chapters are perhaps the
most effective: the caricature of the Baptist home; the in
dignant realism of the apprenticeship in the sweating-
rooms; the generalized description of the longing from the
'prison-house of brick and iron' for the beauty apprehended
as knowledge and poetry. The beginnings of Alton Locke
in political activity are also, in general outline, convincing.
With them, however, begins also the major emphasis on
argument, on prolonged discussion of events, which is evi
dently Kingsley's motive and energy. Often this discussion
is interesting, particularly as we recognize the familiar
popularization of Carlyle and of the ideas which Carlyle
concentrated. This merges, from the time of the conversion
(the curious chapter Dreamland), into the Christian So
cialist arguments with which Kingsley's name is commonly
identified. It is doubtful whether much attention of a dif
ferent kind, attention, that is, other than to the genealogy
of ideas, can be given to all these parts of the book. A very
large part of it is like reading old newspapers, or at least old
pamphlets. The issues are tfiere, but the terms are arbitrary
and the connexions mechanical. The book is not an 'auto
biography* but a tract.

We need note here only the conclusion, alike of the story
and of the argument. Once again, the motive to Chartism,
to a working-class political movement, has been sympa
thetically set down (it was on this score that Kingsley and

THE INDTJSTBIAL NOVELS log

others were thought of as 'advanced' or 'dangerous' tihink-
ers). But again the effort is seen finally as a delusion: In
effect- we understand and sympathize with your sufferings
which drove you to this, but what you are doing is terribly

mistaken':

*Ay,^ she went on, her figure dilating, and her eyes
flashing, like an inspired prophetess, 'that is in the
Bible! What would you more than that? That is your
charter; the only ground of all charters. You, like all
mankind, have had dim inspirations, confused yearn
ings after your future destiny, and, like all the world
from the beginning, you have tried to realise, by self-
willed methods of your own, what you can only do by
God s inspiration, God's method. ... Oh! look back,
look back, at the history of English Radicalism for the
last half -century, and judge by your own deeds, your
own words; were you fit for those privileges which you
so frantically demanded? Do not answer me, that those
who had them were equally unfit; but thank God,
if the case be indeed so, that your incapacity was not
added to theirs, to make confusion worse confounded.
Learn a new lesson. Believe at last that you are in
Christ, and become new creatures. With those mis-
erable, awful farce tragedies of April and June, let old
things pass away, and all things become new. Believe
that your kingdom is not of this world, but of One
whose servants must not fight.' 12

It is not surprising after this that the destiny of the hero is
once againemigration. Alton Locke dies as he reaches
America, but Ms fellow-Chartist, Crossthwaite, will come

back after seven years.

The regeneration of society, according to Kingsley's
Cambridge preface to the book, will meanwhile proceed
under the leadership of a truly enlightened aristocracy. It
will be a movement towards democracy, but not to that
"tyranny of numbers' of which the dangers have been seen
in the United States. For:

As long, I believe, as the Throne, the House of Lords,
and the Press, are what, thank God, they are, so long

110 C0LTTOE AND SOCIETY

will each enlargement of the suffrage be a fresh source
not of danger, but of safety; for it will bind the masses
to the established order of things by that loyalty
which springs from content; from the sense of being
appreciated, trusted, dealt with not as children, but as
men. ls

Felix Holt (1866)

Felix Holt was not published till 1866, but we can set
beside it a passage from a letter of George Eliot's, written
to J. Sibree in 1848, just after the French Revolution of
that year:

You and Carlyle . . . are the only two people who feel
just as 1 would have themwho can glory in what is
actually great and beautiful without putting forth any
cold reservations and incredulities to save their credit
for wisdom. 1 am all the more delighted with your en
thusiasm because I didn't expect it. I feared that you
lacked revolutionary ardour. But no you are just as
sanS'Culottish and rash as I would have you. ... I
thought we had fallen on such evil days that we were
to see no really great movementthat ours was what
St Simon calls a purely critical epoch, not at all an
organic one; but I begin to be glad of my date. I would
consent, however, to have a year dipt off my life for
the sake of witnessing such a scene as that of the men
of the barricades bowing to the image of Christ, 'who
first taught fraternity to men'. One trembles to look
into every fresh newspaper lest there should be some
thing to mar the picture. ... I should have no hope
of good from any imitative movement at home. Our
working classes are eminently inferior to the mass of
the French people. In France the mind of the people
is highly electrified; they are full of ideas on social sub
jects; they really desire social reform not merely an
acting out of Sancho Panza's favourite proverb, *Yes-
terday for you, today for me*. The revolutionary ani
mus extended over the whole nation, and embraced

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS HI

the rural populationnot merely, as with us, the arti
sans of the towns. Here there is so much larger a
proportion of selfish radicalism and unsatisfied brute
sensuality (in the agricultural and mining districts es
pecially) than of perception or desire of justice, that a
revolutionary movement would be simply destructive,
not constructive. Besides, it would be put down. . . .
And there is nothing In our Constitution to obstruct
the slow progress of political reform. This is all we are
fit for at present. The social reform which may pre
pare us for great changes is more and more the object
of effort both in Parliament and out of it. But we Eng
lish are slow crawlers. 14

The distinctions in this are doubtful, but the tone indicates
an intelligence of a different order from the other novelists
discussed. We are interested in Mrs Gaskell or Kingsley or
Disraeli because of what they testified; with George Eliot
there is another interest, because of the quality of the
witness.

This quality is evident in Felix Holt, which as a novel has
a quite different status from those previously discussed. It
has also, however, much in common with them. The formal
plot turns on the familiar complications of inheritance in
property, and Esther, with her inherited breeding showing
itself in poor circumstances, has something in common with
Sybil. As with Sybil, her title to a great estate is proved, but
there the comparison with Disraeli ends. Harold Transome
is, like Egremont, a second son; like him, he turns to the
reforming side in politics. But George Eliot was incapable
of resting on the image of an Egremont, the figurehead of
the enlightened gentleman. Harold Transome is a coarser
reality, and it is impossible that Esther should marry him.
She renounces her claim and marries Felix Holt. It is as if
Sybil had renounced the Mowbray estates and married
Stephen Morley. I do not make any claim for the superior
reality of George Eliot's proceedings. The thing is as con
trived, in the service of a particular image of the desirable,
as Disraeli's very different d6nouement. George Eliot works

CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

with, a rather finer net, but it is not in such elements of the
novel that her real superiority is apparent.

Nor again is there much superiority in her creation of
Felix Holt himself. He is shown as a working-man radical,
determined to stick to his own class, and to appeal solely
to the energies of 'moral force*. He believes in sobriety and
education, argues for social rather than merely political
reform, and wants to be

a demagogue of a new sort; an honest one, if possible,
who will tell the people they are blind and f ooKsh, and
neither flatter them nor fatten on them. 15

It is not easy, at any time, to say whether a character *con-
vinces'. We are al apt, in such questions, to impose our
own conceptions both of the probable and the desirable.
But one can usually see, critically, when a character comes
to existence in a number of aspects, forming something like
the image of a life; and, alternatively, when a character is
fixed at a different and simpler stage: in the case of Felix
Holt, at a physical appearance and a set of opinions. Mrs
Gaskell could conceive the early John Barton in much
these terms, but, because other substance was lacking, she
had virtually to dismiss him as a person when the course
of action found necessary on other grounds went beyond
the limits of her sympathy. Felix Holt, like Alton Locke,
is conceived as a more probable hero: that is to say, as one
whose general attitude is wholly sympathetic to the author,
and who is detached from him only by a relative immatu
rity. Like Alton Locke, Felix Holt becomes involved in a
riot; like him, he is mistaken for a ringleader; like Mm, he
is sentenced to imprisonment. This recurring pattern is not
copying, in the vulgar sense. It is rather the common work
ing of an identical fear, which was present also in Mrs
GaskelTs revision of John Barton. It is at root the fear of
a sympathetic, reformist-minded member of the middle
classes at being drawn into any kind of mob violence. John
Barton is involved in earnest, and his creator's sympathies
are at once withdrawn, to the obvious detriment of the
work as a whole. Sympathy is transferred to Jem Wilson,
mistakenly accused, and to Margaret's efforts on his behalf,

THE INDUSTRIAL NOVELS 113

which have a parallel in Esther's impulse to speak at the
trial of Felix Holt. But the basic pattern is a dramatization
of the fear of being involved in violence: a dramatization
made possible by the saving clause of innocence and mis
taken motive, and so capable of redemption. What is really
interesting is that the conclusion of this kind of dramatiza
tion is then taken as proof of the rightness of the author's
original reservations. The people are indeed dangerous, in
their constant tendency to blind disorder. Anyone sympa
thizing with them is likely to become involved. Therefore
(a most ratifying word) it can be sincerely held that the
popular movements actually under way are foolish and in
adequate, and that the only wise course is dissociation from
them.

Of course, that there is inadequacy in any such move
ment is obvious, but the discriminations one would expect
from a great novelist are certainly not drawn In Felix Holt.
Once again Cobbett is a touchstone, and his conduct at his
own trial after the labourers' revolts of 1830 is a ner dem
onstration of real maturity than the fictional compromises
here examined, Cobbett, like nearly all men who have
worked with their hands, hated any kind of violent destruc
tion of useful things. But he tad the experience and the
strength to enquire further into violence. He believed, more
over, what George Eliot so obviously could not believe, that
the common people were something other than a mob, and
had instincts and habits something above drunkenness, gul
libility and ignorance. He would not have thought Felix
Holt an "honest demagogue* for telling the people that they
were *blind and foolish*. He would have thought him rather
a very convenient ally of the opponents of reform. George
EMofs view of the common people is uncomfortably close
to that of Carlyle in Shooting Niagara: *blockheadism, gul
libility, bribeability, amenability to beer and balderdash*.
This was the common first assumption, and was the basis
for the distinction (alike in her 1848 comment and in Fein
Holt) between 'political* and 'social' reform. The former is
only 'machinery*; the latter is seen as substance. The dis
tinction is useful, but consider this very typical speech by
Felix Holt;

114 COLTOBE AKD SOCIETY 1780-1950

The way to get rid of folly is to get rid of vain ex
pectations, and of thoughts that don't agree with the
nature of things. The men who have had true thoughts
about water, and what it will do when it is turned into
steam and under all sorts of circumstances, have made
themselves a great power in the world: they are turn
ing the wheels of engines that will help to change most
things. But no engines would have done, if there had
been false notions about the way water would act.
Now, all the schemes about voting, and districts, and
annual Parliaments, and the rest, are engines, and the
water or steam the force that is to work them must
come out of human nature out of men's passions, feel
ings, and desires. Whether the engines will do good
work or bad depends on these feelings. 16

But the 'engines' mentioned are, after all, particular engines,
proposed to do different work from the engines previously
employed. It is really mechanical to class all the engines
together and to diminish their importance, when in fact
their purposes differ. The new proposals are an embodi
ment of 'passions, feelings, and desires': alternative pro
posals, supported by alternative feelings, so that a choice
can properly be made. The real criticism, one suspects, is
of 'thoughts that don't agree with the nature of things', and
this 'nature of things' can either be a supposedly permanent
Tinman nature', or else, as probably, the supposedly im
mutable laws of society'. Among these laws', as Felix
Holt's argument continues, is the supposition that among
every hundred men there will be thirty with 'some sober
ness, some sense to choose', and seventy, either drunk or
ignorant or mean or stupid'. With such an assumption it is
easy enough to 'prove' that a voting reform would be use
less. George Eliot's advice, essentiaEy, is that the working
men should first make themselves 'sober and educated', un
der the leadership of men like Felix Holt, and then reform
will do some good. But the distinction between 'political'
and 'social' reform is seen at this point at its most arbitrary.
The abuses of an unref ormed Parliament are even dragged
in as an argument against parliamentary reform it will

THE INDUSTBIAJL, NOVELS Hg

only be more of the same sort of thing. Hie winning through
political reform of the means of education, of the leisure
necessary to take such opportunity, of the conditions of
work and accommodation which will diminish poverty and
drunkenness: all these and similar aims, which were the
purposes for which the 'engines' were proposed, are left
out of the argument. Without them, the sober responsible
educated working man must, presumably, spring fully
armed from his own ('drunken, ignorant, mean and stupid')
head.

It has passed too long for a kind of maturity and deptii
in experience to argue that politics and political attach
ments are only possible to superficial minds; that any ap
preciation of the complexity of human nature necessarily
involves a wise depreciation of these noisy instruments. The
tone 'cold reservations and incredulities to save their
credit for wisdom' is often heard in Felix Holt:

Crying abuses-floated paupers', ^bloated pluralists*,
and other corruptions hindering men from being wise
and happyhad to be fought against and slain. Suet
a time is a time of hope. Afterwards, when the corpses
of those monsters have been held up to the public
wonder and abhorrence, and yet wisdom and happi
ness do not follow, but rather a more abundant breed
ing of the foolish and unhappy, comes a time of
doubt and despondency. . . . Some dwelt on the abo
lition of all abuses, and on millennial blessedness gen
erally; others, whose imaginations were less suffused
with exhalations of the dawn, insisted chiely on the
ballot-box. 17

The wise shake of the head draws a complacent answering
smile. But what I myself find in such a passage as this, in
the style ('suffused with exhalations of the dawn*; 'millen
nial blessedness generally') as in the feeling (*a more abun
dant breeding of the foolish and unhappy*) , is not the deep
and extensive working of a generous mind, but rather the
petty cynicism of a mind that has lost, albeit only tem
porarily, its capacity for human respect.

Felix Holt's opinions are George Eliot's opinions purged

11 6 CIILTDUE AND SOCIETY

of just this element, which is a kind of intellectual fatigue.

It is the mood of the 'sixties of Shooting Niagara and Cul
ture and Anarchy holding an incompetent post-mortem on

the earlier phases of Radicalism. Felix Holt himself is not
so much a character as an impersonation: a rdle in which
he again appears in the Address to Working Men, by Felix
Holt, which George Eliot was persuaded to write by her
publisher. Here the dangers of active democracy are more
clearly put:

The too absolute predominance of a class whose wants

have been of a common sort, who are chiefly straggling
to get better and more food, clothing, shelter, and
bodily recreation, may lead to hasty measures for the
sake of having things more fairly shared which, even
if they did not fail . . . would at last debase the life
of the nation, 18

Reform must proceed

not by any attempt to do away directly with the ac
tually existing class distinctions and advantages . . .

but by the turning of Class Interests into Class Func
tions. ... If the claims of the unendowed multitude

of working men hold within them principles which
must shape the future, it is not less true that the en
dowed classes, in their inheritance from the past, hold
the precious material without which no worthy, noble
future can be moulded. 19

George Eliot, in this kind of thinking, is very far from her
best. Her position, behind the facade of Felix Holt, is that
of a Carlyle without the energy, of an Arnold without the
quick practical sense, of an anxiously balancing Mill with
out the intellectual persistence. Yet it is clear that, inade
quate as her attempt at a position may be, it proceeds,
though not fruitfully, from that sense of society as a com
plicated inheritance which is at the root of her finest work.
In Felix Holt, this sense is magnificently realized at the level
of one set of personal relationships that of Mrs Transome,
the lawyer Jermyn and their son Harold Transome. In
Middlemarch, with almost equal intensity, this realization

THE INBUSTBIAL NOVELS 117

is extended to a whole representative section of provincial
society. Always, at her best, she is unrivalled in English fic
tion in her creation and working of the complication and
consequence inherent in all relationships. From such a posi
tion in experience she naturally sees society at a deeper level
than its political abstractions indicate, and she sees her own
society, in her own choice of word, as 'vicious'. Her favour
ite metaphor for society is a network: a 'tangled skein'; a
'tangled web'; 'the long-growing evils of a great nation are
a tangled business'. This, again, is just; it is the ground of
her finest achievements. But the metaphor, while having a
positive usefulness in its indication of complexity, has also a
negative effect. For it tends to represent social and in
deed directly personalrelationships as passive: acted upon
rather than acting. 'One fears', she remarked, 'to pull the
wrong thread, in the tangled scheme of things.' The cau
tion is reasonable, but the total effect of the image false.
For in fact every element in the complicated system is ac
tive: the relationships are changing, constantly, and any ac
tioneven abstention; certainly the impersonation of Felix
Holt affects, even if only slightly, the tensions, the pres
sures, the very nature of the complication. It is a mark, not
of her deep perception, but of the point at which this fails,
that her attitude to society is finally so negative: a negative-
ness of detail which the width of a phrase like 'deep social
reform' cannot disguise. The most important thing about
George Eliot is her superb control of particular complexi
ties, but this must not be stated in terms of an interest in
'personal' relationships as opposed to 'social' relationships.
She did not believe, as others have tried to do, that these
categories are really separate: 'there is no private life which
has not been determined by a wider public life', as she re
marks near the beginning of Felix Holt. Yet it is a fact that
when she touches, as she chooses to touch, the lives and the
problems of working people, her personal observation and
conclusion surrender, virtually without a fight, to the gen
eral structure of f eeling about these matters which was the
common property of her generation, and which she was at
once too hesitant to transcend, and too intelligent to raise
into any lively embodiment. She fails in the extension which

Il8 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

she knows to be necessary, because indeed there seems 'no
right thread to pull'. Almost any kind of social action is

ruled out, and the most that can be hoped for, with a hero
like Felix Holt, is that he will in the widest sense keep his
hands reasonably clean. It is indeed the mark of a deadlock
in society when so fine an intelligence and so quick a sym
pathy can conceive no more than this. For patience and
caution, without detailed intention, are very easily con
verted into acquiescence, and there is no right to acquiesce
if society is known to be Vicious'.

These novels, when read together, seem to illustrate
clearly enough not only the common criticism of industrial
ism, which the tradition was establishing, but also the gen
eral structure of feeling which was equally determining.
Recognition of evil was balanced by fear of becoming in
volved. Sympathy was transformed, not into action, but
into withdrawal. We can all observe the extent to which this
structure of feeling has persisted, into both the literature
and the social thinking of our own time.

CHAPTER VI

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD

IN his Discourse VII, On the Scope and Nature of Univer
sity Education (1852), Newman wrote:

It were well if the English, like the Greek language,
possessed some definite word to express, simply and
generally, intellectual proficiency or perfection, such as
liealth*, as used with reference to the animal frame,
and Virtue* with reference to our moral nature. I am
not able to find such a term;talent, ability, genius,
belong distinctly to the raw material, which is the
subject-matter, not to that excellence which is the re
sult, of exercise and training. When we turn, indeed,
to the particular kinds of intellectual perfection, words
are forthcoming for our purpose, as, for instance,
judgement, taste, and skill; yet even these belong, for
the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon prac
tice or upon art, and not to any perfect condition of
the intellect, considered in itself. Wisdom, again, which
is a more comprehensive word than any other, cer
tainly has a direct relation to conduct and to human
Me. Knowledge, indeed, and Science express purely in
tellectual ideas, but still not a state or habit of the in
tellect; for knowledge, in its ordinary sense, is but one
of its circumstances, denoting a possession or influ
ence; and science has been appropriated to the subject-
matter of the intellect, instead of belonging at present,
as it ought to do, to the intellect itself. The conse
quence is that, on an occasion like this, many words
are necessary, in order, first, to bring out and convey
what is surely no difficult idea in itself that of the cul
tivation of the intellect as an end; next, in order to
recommend what surely is no unreasonable object; and
lastly, to describe and realize to the mind the particu
lar perfection in which that object consists. 1

120 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

The most surprising fact about this paragraph is that New
man does not meet the want of 'some definite word* with
the word 'culture'. The staple of his argument is clearly con
nected with the ideas of 'cultivated' and 'cultivation' as de
fined by Coleridge. He is moreover, in his concluding
phrases, virtually announcing the task which Arnold was
about to undertake in Culture and Anarchy. Elsewhere, he
in fact made the essential connexion with 'culture':

And so, as regards intellectual culture, I am far from
denying utility in this large sense as the end of educa
tion, when I lay it down, that the culture of the in
tellect is a good in itself and its own end. ... As the
body may be sacrificed to some manual or other toil
... so may the intellect be devoted to some specific
profession; and I do not call this the culture of the in
tellect. Again, as some member or organ of the body
may be inordinately used and developed, so may
memory or imagination or the reasoning faculty; and
this again is not intellectual culture. On the other hand,
as the body may be tended, cherished, and exercised
with a simple view to its general health, so may the
inteEect also be generally exercised in order to its per
fect state; and this is its cultivation. 2

The proposition is in terms of the 'general health' of the
mind, as in Coleridge's distinction between the Tiectic of
disease* of one kind of civilization, and the *bloom of health'
of a civilization 'grounded in cultivation'. Health is New
man's standard for the body; his standard for the mind is
perfection:

There is a physical beauty and a moral: there is a
beauty of person, there is a beauty of our moral being,
which is natural virtue; and in like manner there is a
beauty, there is a perfection, of the intellect. There is
an ideal perfection in these various subject-matters, to
wards which individual instances are seen to rise, and
which are the standards for all instances whatever. 8

This, again, is within the tradition, from Burke to Arnold.
The work of perfection, which Arnold was to name as Cul-

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD 121

tare, received increasing emphasis in opposition to the pow
erful Utilitarian tendency which conceived education as the
training of men to carry out particular tasks in a particular

kind of civilization. Coleridge, Newman and others set a

different ideal:

the harmonious development of those qualities and
faculties that characterize our humanity. 4

This part of the preparation for Matthew Arnold's work
is now clear. But, by the time he came to write, there was
also another consideration: the general reaction to the social
effects of full industrialism, and in particular to the agita
tion of the industrial working class. One stock reaction to
this agitation is well known in Macaulay's phrase 'we must
educate our masters'. Macaulay, characteristically, argued
that the 'ignorance* of the 'common people* was a danger to
property, and that therefore their education was necessary.
Carlyle, on the other hand, had rejected any argument for
education based on grounds of social expediency: 'as if . . .
the first function (of) a government were not . . .to impart
the gift of thinking'. 5 Kingsley, in his Cambridge Preface
to Alton Locke, recommended the new Working Men's
Colleges:

Without insulting them by patronage, without inter
fering with their religious opinions, without tampering
with their independence in any wise, but smply on
the ground of a common humanity, they (i.e. mem
bers of the University of Cambridge) have been help
ing to educate these men, belonging for the most part,
I presume, to the very class which this book sets forth
as most unhappy and most dangerous the men con
scious of unsatisfied and unemployed intellect And
they have their reward in a practical and patent form.
Out of these men a volunteer corps is ogauized, offi
cered partly by themselves, partly by gentlemen of the
University: a nucleus of discipline, loyalty, and civilisa
tion for the whole population of Cambridge. 6

Kingsley's last sentence, his 'practical and patent reward', is
something of a revision of his earlier reason: 'simply on the

122 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

ground of a common humanity'. But however phrased, and
however now interpreted, the response itself is evident. We
can see it very clearly in an extract from a speech by F. D.
Maurice to the Manchester, Ancoats and Salford Working
Men's College, in 1859:

Now while we were thinking about these things, and
thinking earnestly about them, there came that awful
year 1848, which I shall always look upon as one of
the great epochs of history. . . . I do say that when I
think how it has affected the mind and the heart of the
people of England; yes, of all classes of Englishmen.
. , . I hear one intelligent man and another confessing;
'Ten years ago we thought differently. But all of us
have acquired since that time, a new sense of our re
lation to the working-class.' ... It did cause us to
fear, I own; but it was not fear for our property and
position; it was the fear that we were not discharging
the responsibilities, greater than those which rank or
property imposes, that our education laid upon us.
. . . We believed and felt that unless the classes in this
country which had received any degree of knowledge
more than their fellows were willing to share it with
their fellows, to regard it as precious because it bound
them to their fellows, England would fall first under
an anarchy, and then under a despotism. . . J

This was the reaction, and Maurice added a note on
method:

What we wanted, if possible, was to make our teach
ing a bond of intercourse with the men whom we
taught. How that could be, we might never have found
out. But the working men themselves had found it out.
We heard in 1853 that the people of Sheffield had
founded a People's College. The news seemed to us to
mark a new era in education. We had belonged to Col
leges. They had not merely given us a certain amount
of indoctrination in certain subjects; they had not
merely prepared us for our particular professions; they
had borne witness of a culture which is the highest of
all culture. , . . 8

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ABNOLD 1^3

TMs aspect of the preparation of Arnold's ground could
hardly be more evident: 'culture', quite explicitly, is offered
as the alternative to 'anarchy'. The need for popular educa
tion might be met in a number of ways; the Utilitarians, in
particular, had been early in the field. But Maurice's em
phasis is that of Coleridge and Newman. The general op
position to Utilitarianism, and the alarmed reaction to in
creasing working-class power, here came together in a most
significant way.

One other aspect of Arnold's inheritance needs to be
briefly examined: the important attitudes which he had
learned from his father. Thomas Arnold's liberalism, in the
difficult 18305, was best expressed in his Englishman's
Register (1831), and in the letters to the Sheffield Courant
at the beginning and to the Hertford Reformer at the end
of the decade. These are all worth reading, but only two or
three points need be noted here. There is, for instance, this
characteristic emphasis:

When I cal the great evil of England the unhappy
situation in which the poor and the rich stand towards
each other, I wish to show that the evil is in our
feelings quite as much or more than in our outward
condition. 9

The period is one of revolution:

We have been living, as it were, the Me of three hun
dred years in thirty. All things have made a prodigious
start together or rather all that could have done so,
and those that could not have, therefore, been left at a
long distance behind. 10

One proper response is Education:

Education, in the common sense of the word, is re
quired by a people before poverty has made havoc
among them; at that critical moment when civilization
makes its first burst, and is accompanied by an im
mense commercial activity. 11

The other, deeper response is to end the habit of laissez-
faire:

124 CXXLTUBE AND SOCIETY

. . . one of the falsest maxims which ever pandered
to human selfishness under the name of political wis
dom. . . . We stand by and let this most unequal race
take its own course, forgetting that the very name of
society implies that it shall not be a mere race, but that
its object is to provide for the common good of all. 12

This is the new humane liberalism, which can join itself
with attitudes drawn from quite other ways of thinking,
as here:

The unwieldy and utterly unorganized mass of our
population requires to be thoroughly organized. Where
is the part of our body into which minute blood
vessels and nerves of the most acute sensibility are not
insinuated, so that every part there is truly alive? 18

This is the 'organic* stress, as in Coleridge, and it is not
surprising that such a liberal as a father had such a liberal
as a son.

We can now turn to Matthew Arnold's important defini
tion of Culture, which at last gives the tradition a single
watchword and a name. His purpose in Culture and An
archy, he writes, is to

recommend culture as the great help out of our pres
ent difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total per
fection by means of getting to know, on all the matters
which most concern us, the best which has been
thought and said in the world; and, through this
knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought
upon our stock notions and habits, which we now fol
low staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that
there is a virtue in following them staunchly which
makes up for the mischief of following them me
chanically. 14

The quotation often stops halfway, as if perfection were to
be striven for merely by 'getting to know'. As is clear, Ar
nold intends this only as a first stage, to be followed by the

re-examination of 'stock notions and habits'. And further:

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD 12$

Culture, which is the study of perfection, leads us ...
to conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious
perfection, developing all sides of our humanity; and
as a general perfection, developing all parts of our
society. 15

Culture, then, is both study and pursuit. It is not merely the
development of literary culture', but of 'all sides of our hu
manity'. Nor is it an activity concerning individuals alone,
or some part or section of society; it is, and must be, es
sentially general.

Culture and Anarchy is, first, a description of this atti
tude; second, a re-examination of certain dominant nine
teenth-century "notions and habits'; and third, a considera
tion of the bearings of this position on the progress of
society. In all three elements, Arnold draws heavily on the
thinkers who had immediately preceded him: in particular
on Coleridge, Burke, Newman and Carlyle, Yet the work
is original in tone and in certain of its examples and em
phases. It was written, moreover, in a rather different so
cial situation. Its impact was immediate, and it has re
mained more influential than any other single work in this
tradition.

Arnold begins with a point familiar to us from Carlyle
and Coleridge:

In our modern world . . . the whole civilization is, to
a much greater degree than the civilization of Greece
and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends con
stantly to become more so. 16

This is the social fact, and the corresponding social attitudes
are described, in the usual phrase, as an over-valuation
of 'machinery*: means valued as ends. The first piece of
'machinery*, or stock notion, is Wealth:

Nine Englishmen out of ten at the present day believe
that our greatness and welfare are proved by our be
ing so very rich. 17

The people who believe this are the 'Philistines'. And:

126 OCHLTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Culture says: 'Consider these people then, their way
of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of
their voice; look at them attentively; observe the lit
erature they read, the things which give them pleas
ure, the words which come forth out of their mouths,
the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds;
would any amount of wealth be worth having with
the condition that one was to become just like these
people by having it?' 18

This is a paragraph which one kind of reader will appre
ciatively underline. He will enjoy the spectacle of 'these
people*, with their British Banner and their tea-meetings,
as he enjoyed Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. I am sorry
to dissent, but there is something in the tone which reminds
us that Arnold not only popularized the tradition, but
brought down on it the continuing charges of priggishness
and spiritual pride. The damage done by the stock notion
of Wealth is its narrowing of human ideals to a single end,
which is really only a means. The question, certainly, is
what quality of life the wealth is used to sustain. Arnold
asked this question, but included in his answer a stock re
action to 'the vulgar' which is surely vulgar in itself. The
description of spiritual perfection, in Newman, comes
through with a remarkable purity that commands respect
even where assent is difficult. In Arnold, on the other hand,
the spiritual ideal is too often flanked by a kind of witty
and malicious observation better suited to minor fiction.
The most bitter opponent of Newman could never have
called him a prig, and Burke, at the height of his prejudices,
retains an always admirable strength. Arnold has neither
this inviolability nor this power.

This may be seen again in his attack on the 'stock no
tion' of Progress, in Friendship's Garland:

Your middle-class man thinks it is the highest pitch of
development and civilization when his letters are car
ried twelve times a day from Islington to Camberwell,
and from Camberwell to Islington, and if railway trains
run to-and-fro between them every quarter of an hour.
He thinks it is nothing that the trains only carry him

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD 127

from an illiberal, dismal life at Camberwell to an
illiberal, dismal life at Islington; and tibte letters only

tell him that such is the life there. 19

The bearing of the question is again fruitful, but Arnold's
demonstration of the point depends, first, on prior assent to
the judgement 'illiberal' and 'dismal', and, second, on the
inclusion of 'Islington' and 'Camberwell*, which are really
false particulars, very similar in function to Mr Eliot's
'Camden Town and Golders Green'. One might say that the
light penetrates, but that it is hardly accompanied by
sweetness. The literary method, rather, is that of a soured
romanticism, of which we have had sufficient examples in
the stock notions about 'Subtopia' in our own day.

The fact is that in the developed social structure of a fully
industrialized society few reactions of any kind could escape
an admixture of largely self-regarding feelings of class. The
worst harm done by the 'stock notion' of class, a notion re
ceiving constant assent from the material structure of so
ciety, was that it offered category feelings about human
behaviour, based on a massing and simplifying of actual
individuals, as an easy substitute for the difficulties of per
sonal and immediate judgement Arnold had many useful
things to say about class, but it is one of the 'stock notions
and habits' whose influence he did not wholly escape.

What Arnold had to say about Industry and Production,
as 'stock notions', seems to me admirable. It is of a piece
with the ideas of Carlyle, Ruskin, and, in our own day,
Tawney. But his best treatment of a stock notion is his dis
cussion of Freedom. It is very much what Burke had said
in the early part of the Reflections, but it is admirably en
riched and extended by Arnold's contact with the high pe
riod of Liberalism.

Freedom . . . is a very good horse to ride, but to ride
somewhere. You . . . think that you have only to get
on the back of your horse Freedom . . . and to ride
away as hard as you can, to be sure of coming to the
right destination. If your newspapers can say what
they like, you think you are sure of being well-
informed. 20

128 CULTXJBE AND SOCIETY

The text is still apt, and unanswerable. Arnold was an ex
cellent analyst of the deficiencies of the gospel of 'doing
as one likes': partly because of his reliance on the traditional
idea of man's business as the 'pursuit of perfection'; and
partly, in social terms, because he lived through a period
in which the freedom of one group of people to do as they
liked was being challenged by that much larger group who
were being *done by as others liked'. He saw the conse
quences, in both spheres: the danger of spiritual anarchy
when individual assertion was the only standard; the dan
ger of social anarchy as the rising class exerted its power.
Yet the most influential part of Arnold's work is not his
treatment of the 'stock notions', but his effort to give his
revaluation a practical bearing in society. It is often said
(and his tone, at times, lends unfortunate support) that
Arnold recommends a merely selfish personal cultivation:
that although he professes concern about the state of so
ciety, the improvement of this state must wait on the proc
ess of his internal perfection:

The culture we recommend is, above all, an inward
operation. . . . Culture . . . places human perfection
in an internal condition. 21

But this, if Arnold has been read, can be only a deliberate
misunderstanding. For example:

Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible while
the individual remains isolated. The individual is re
quired, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in
his own development if he disobeys, to carry others
along with him in his march towards perfection, to be
continually doing all he can to enlarge and increase the
volume of the human stream sweeping thitherward. 22

Or again:

'The fewer there are who follow the way to perfection,
the harder that way is to find/ So all our fellowmen,
in the East of London and elsewhere, we must take
along with us in the progress towards perfection, if
we ourselves really, as we profess, want to be perfect;

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD 12Q

and we must not let the worship of any fetish, any
machinery, such as manufactures or populationwhich
are not, like perfection, absolute goods in themselves,
though we think them so create for us such a multi
tude of miserable, sunken and ignorant human beings,
that to carry them all along with us is impossible, and
perforce they must for the most part be left by us in
their degradation and wretchedness. 23

The position is quite clear, and it is evidently in line with
the basic criticism of Industrialism, and with the traditional
reaction to the accumulating evidence of poverty and suf
fering. Others had argued for a new national education,
but none with the authority or effect of Arnold. Those who
accuse him of a policy of "cultivated inaction* forget not
only his arguments but his life. As an Inspector of schools,
and independently, his effort to establish a system of general
and humane education was intense and sustained. There is
nothing of the dandy in Arnold's fight against the vicious
mechanism of the Revised Code. On a number of similar
educational matters of great importance he showed a fine
capacity for detailed application of principles that in his
theoretical writings are often open to a charge of vagueness.
Culture and Anarchy, in fact, needs to be read alongside
the reports, minutes, evidence to commissions and specifi
cally educational essays which made up so large a part of
Arnold's working life.

When we have said this, we may have rescued Arnold
from a common and insupportable charge, but we have not
finally construed either his significance or his effect. The
most interesting point to consider is his recommendation of
the State as the agent of general perfection. Here, in part,
he is following the ideas, and the language, of Burke. He
speaks, characteristically, of

ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democ
racy, though in this country they are novel and untried
ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent
indignation with the past, abstract systems of renova
tion applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in
black and white for elaborating down to the very

13O CULTtJKE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

smallest details a rational society for the future these
are the ways of Jacobinism. 24

1 may call them the ways of Jacobinism' (they had been
called this for three-quarters of a century). In any event,
we are now well used to this kind of criticism as typical of
the opposition to 'State 7 power. In Arnold, as in Burke, this
is not the conjunction; the argument against 'State' power
depends, nearly always, on who is the 'State'. Arnold's po
sition is that of Burke:

He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue
willed also the necessary means of its perfection: He
willed therefore the State. 25

Arnold, similarly, imagined the State as the 'centre of light
and authority', the organ of the 'best self. But how, in
practical terms, was this centre to be composed? Burke had
accepted the existing ruling class as, though imperfect, the
natural 'centre of light and authority'. Arnold, though he
looked at each class in turn, could find none which seemed
to him at all qualified for so high a duty. The aristocracy
(Barbarians) were, as a class, useless, because their char
acteristic virtues were those created by the business of de
fending the status quo. Their very vigour in this defence
made them inaccessible to the free play of new ideas, on
which light and authority' must depend. The middle
classes (Philistines) were also useless, because of their at
tachment to an external civilization. Their faith in 'machin
ery' (Wealth, Industry, Production, Progress) and in in
dividual success denied, respectively, the ^harmonious* and
the 'general* pursuit of perfection. As for the working classes
(Populace), they either shared with the middle classes the
attachment to external civilization, wishing only to become
Philistine as quickly as possible; or else they were merely
degraded and brutal, the repository of darkness rather than
of light.

Others might see all this, and consequently fear the idea
of State power, which could only be the embodiment of the
interest of one or other of these classes. And if this were

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW AKNO3LD 131

indeed true, could the State, in practical terms, be con
sidered as a likely "centre of light and authority' at all?

But how to organize this authority, or to what hands to
entrust the wielding of it? How to get your State,
summing up the right reason of the community, and
giving effect to it, as circumstances may require, with
vigour? And here I think I see my enemies waiting for
me with a hungry joy in their eyes. But I shall elude
them. 26

He saw his enemies waiting indeed; and we too, who are
not his enemies, still wait, and are still, in a sense, hungry.
One is glad to see Arnold eluding the nineteenth-century
pack; or to see him enjoying the thought of doing so, even
if the glint has a certain ridiculous effect The problem,
however, remained a most difficult one. The existing social
classes, the ordinary candidates for power, were in Arnold's
view inadequate for its proper exercise. The political con
flict was merely a deadlock of their imperfections. For these
reasons a State was needed, as an adequate and transcend
ing organ. The classes were the embodiment of our ordinary
selves; to embody our best self we must create a State. But
by what means, and through what persons? Arnold's an
swer depends on what he called the 'remnant'. In each
class, he argued, there existed, alongside the characteristic
majority, a minority, a number of 'aliens', who were not
disabled by the ordinary notions and habits of their class:

persons who are mainly led, not by their class spirit,
but by a general humane spirit, by the love of human
perfection. 27

In such persons the 'best self is active, and they can try,
in a number of ways, to awaken the T>est self that is latent
in all men but is obscured by the inadequacies of class
ideology and habit. The means of awakening wil include
education, poetry and criticism. Education will base itself
on 'the best that has been thought and written in the world'.
By extending and communicating this record of die *best
self' of humanity it will create an adequate general knowl
edge and a standard of effective thinking. Poetry, as a dis-

132 CULTXIRE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

tinct organ of the 'best self of men, will set a standard of
'beauty, and of a human nature perfect on all sides*. In this
sense, adding to itself a 'religious and devout energy*, it can
'work on a broader scale for perfection, and with greater
masses of men', and can therefore 'save us', by providing a
lasting and actual standard of the *best self. Finally, criti
cism, as in his general writings Arnold exemplified it, is a
further part of the same process: a creation, by the free
play of intelligence, of 'the authority of the best self. These
ways might be dismissed as impractical, but

it may truly be averred . . . that at the present junc
ture the centre of movement is not in the House of
Commons. It is in the fermenting mind of the nation;
and his is for the next twenty years the real influence
who can address himself to this. 28

Whatever we may think of this as an answer, we can easily
recognize in its mood and attitude a position which since
Arnold's day has been widely and sincerely held. It is at
tacked as a slow and timid programme, but those who hold
to it are entitled to ask whether any quick and ready alter
native for the achievement of Arnold's ends has in fact, in
the ninety years since he wrote, manifested itself.

Nevertheless, there is a real ambiguity in the position,
and this must be examined. For it is not merely the in
fluence of the best individuals that Arnold is recommend
ing; it is the embodiment of this influence in the creation of
a State. On this point, Arnold quotes Wilhelm von Hum-
boldt:

Humboldffs object in this book (The Sphere and Du
ties of Government) is to show that the operation of
government ought to be severely limited to what di
rectly and immediately relates to the security of person
and property. Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the most
beautiful souls that have ever existed, used to say that
one's business in life was first to perfect oneself by all
the means in one's power, and secondly to try and
create in the world around one an aristocracy, the
most numerous that one possibly could, of talents and

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD 133

characters. He saw, of course, that in the end, every
thing comes to {histhat the individual must act for
himself, and must be perfect in himself; and he lived
in a country, Germany, where people were disposed to
act too little for themselves, and to rely too much on
the Government. But even thus, such was his flexibil
ity, so little was he in bondage to a mere abstract
maxim, that he saw very well that for his purpose it
self, of enabling the individual to stand perfect on his
own foundations and to do without the State, the ac
tion of the State would for long, long years be neces
sary. And soon after he wrote his book on The Sphere
and Duties of Government, WUhelm von Humboldt
became Minister of Education in Prussia; and from his
ministry all the great reforms which give the control
of Prussian education to the State . . . take their
origin. 20

The relevance of this to Arnold's immediate purposes in
State education is clear and important. He backs it up with
a quotation from Renan:

A Liberal believes in liberty, and liberty signifies the
nonintervention of the State. But such an ideal is stM
a long way off pom us, and the very means to remove
it to an indefinite distance wotM Ibe precisely the
State's withdrawing its action too soon. 30

The point helps in a local argument, but the position in
which it leaves the general argument is this: that the State
itself must be the principal agent through which, the State
as a 'centre of authority and fight' is to be created. Yet the
existing State, loaded with such an agency, is in fact, on
Arnold's showing, subject to the deadlock of the existing
and inadequate social classes. The aristocracy uses the
power and dignity of the State as an instrument of protec
tion of its own privileges. The middle ckss, reacting against
this, seeks only to diminish State power, and to leave per
fection to those 'simple natural laws' which somehow arise
out of unregulated individual activity. It scarcely seems
likely, if Arnold is right about these cksses, that any actual

134 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

State, expressing the power of one or other of them, or a
deadlocked compromise, could undertake the all-important
function which, he proposes. The State which for Burke was
an actuality has become for Arnold an idea.

The position is further complicated by the nature of
Arnold's reaction to his third great class, the Populace. The
working class was organizing itself. It was, as Arnold put
it, 'our playful giant, which was

beginning to assert and put in practice an English
man's right to do what he likes; his right to march
where he likes, meet where he likes, enter where he
likes, hoot as he likes, threaten as he likes, smash as
he likes. All this, I say, tends to anarchy. 81

This reaction, as we know, is a typical one, and Arnold's
fears run deep:

He comes in immense numbers, and is rather raw and
rough. . . . And thus that profound sense of settled
order and security, without which a society like ours
cannot live and grow at all, sometimes seems to be
beginning to threaten us with taking its departure. 82

So great indeed is the threat that, for resisting it, even

the lovers of culture may prize and employ fire and
strength. 83

With this sort of thing in his mind, Arnold's idea of the
State as a 'centre of authority' takes on a new colouring.

For us, who believe in right reason, in the duty and
possibility of extricating and elevating our best self, in
the progress of humanity towards perfection for us,
the framework of society, that theatre on which this
august drama has to unroll itself, is sacred; and who
ever administers it, and however we may seek to re
move them from their tenure of administration, yet,
while they administer, we steadily and with undivided
heart support them in repressing anarchy and disor
der; because without order there can be no society,
and without society there can be no human per
fection. 8 *

J. EL NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ARNOLD 135

It is here, at so vital a point, that we see Arnold surrender
ing to a 'stock notion or habit' of his class. The organizing,
and at times demonstrating, working class was not, on any
showing, seeking to destroy society as such. It was seeking
by such methods as were available to it, to change the
particular ordering of society which then prevailed. Often,
indeed, it sought only the remedy of some particular griev
ance. For Arnold to confuse the particular, temporary or
dering of interests, which was indeed being threatened,
with human society as such, is the confusion which else
where he so clearly analysed: the confusion between 'ma
chinery' and 'purpose'. The existing 'framework of society'
is always 'machinery'. Arnold, who found it in so many
ways so inadequate, should have known that this was so;
and restrained his 'right reason' from the talk of 'fire and
strength'. He is, indeed, ready for change. He looks forward
'cheerfully and hopefully' to a 'revolution by due course of
law'. But can it honestly be said that the working people
asked for anything other than this, in the terms of their
own experience? Arnold might defend himself from a
charge of simple authoritarianism by arguing that he is con
cerned only to ensure that necessary 'minimum of order'
which would allow the civilizing and humanizing process to
be sustained. But again, can it now honestly be said that
this was threatened, when Arnold was writing? Further,
we must remember that Arnold was asking, not for the Lib
eral 'minimum of order', but, essentially, for the maximum
of order: the State to become a real 'centre of authority'.
When the emphasis on State power is so great, any con
fusion between that ideal State which is the agent of per
fection, and this actual State which embodies particular
powers and interests, becomes dangerous and really dis
abling.

The case is one which Arnold, detached from his particu
lar position, would readily understand. A prejudice over
comes 'right reason', and a deep emotional fear darkens the
light. It is there in his words: hoot, bawl, threaten, rough,
smash. This is not the language of *a stream of fresh
thought', nor is the process it represents any kind of 'deli
cacy and flexibility of thinking'. Calm, Arnold rightly ar-

136 CULTURE AJSID SOCIETY 1780-1950

gued, was necessary. But now the Hyde Park railings were
down, and it was not Arnold's best self which rose at the
sight of them. Certainly he feared a general breakdown,
into violence and anarchy, but the most remarkable facts
about the British working-class movement, since its origin
in the Industrial Revolution, are its conscious and deliberate
abstention from general violence, and its firm faith in other
methods of advance. These characteristics of the British
working class have not always been welcome to its more
romantic advocates, but they are a real human strength,
and a precious inheritance. For it has been, always, a posi
tive attitude: the product not of cowardice and not of apa
thy, but of moral conviction. I think it had more to offer to
the 'pursuit of perfection* than Matthew Arnold, seeing
only his magnified image -of the Rough, was able to realize.
One final point must be made about Arnold's use of the
idea of Culture. Culture is right knowing and right doing;
a process and not an absolute. This, indeed, is Arnold's
doctrine. But his emphasis in detail is so much on the im
portance of knowing, and so little on the importance of
doing, that Culture at times seems very Hke the Dissenters*
Salvation: a thing to secure first, to which all else will then
be added. There is surely a danger of allowing Culture also
to become a fetish: 'freedom is a very good horse to ride,
but to ride somewhere*. Perfection is a 'becoming', culture
is a process, but a part of the effect of Arnold's argument is
to create around them a suggestion that they are known
absolutes. One of the elements in this effect is his style. In
a sentence Hke this, for example-
Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred,
culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness
and light 85

it is difficult not to feel the pressure of Saint Paul's de
scription of Charity, and it seems not improbable that there
has been a (perhaps unconscious, but in any case invalid)
transference of emotion from the old concept to the new.
Culture as a substitute for religion is a very doubtful quan
tity, especially when it is taken, as so often, in its narrowest

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ABNOLD 137

sense. I agree, from a different standpoint, with Newman's
comment on the result:

Accordingly, virtue being only one kind of beauty, the
principle which determines what is virtuous is, not
conscience, but taste?

The implied relaxation has been lived through, and at its
worst it has not been very edifying, at its best not very
convincing, to watch.

Moreover, this kind of intonation of 'culture* seems to be
largely responsible for the common English hostility to the
word, which has in some respects been damaging. I have
found no hostile or derisive reference before 1860, but in
this immediate context such references are common. J. C.
Shairp comments in 1870 on the 'artificiality' of the word. 37
Frederic Harrison refers to 'this same . . . sauerkraut or
culture'* 8 in the course of arguing that Arnold makes 'cul
ture* mean whatever suits himself. Now, the challenge of
the valuations concentrated in the idea of culture was
bound to provoke hostility from defenders of the existing
system. With such hostility, one wants no kind of truce. Yet
this essential conflict has been blurred by adventitious ef
fects. Almost all the words standing for learning, seriousness
and reverence have in fact been compromised, and the
struggle against this ought not to be hindered by our own
faults of tone and feeling. The attachment to culture which
disparages science; the attachment which writes off politics
as a narrow and squalid misdirection of energy; the attach
ment which appears to criticize manners by the priggish
intonation of a word: all these, of which Arnold and his
successors have at times been guilty, serve to nourish and
extend an opposition which is already formidable enough.
The idea of culture is too important to be surrendered to
this kind of failing.

The difficulty of tone indicates, however, a more general
difficulty. Arnold learned from Burke, from Coleridge and
from Newman, but he was differently constituted from each
of them. Burke rested on an existing society, and on a faith.
Coleridge drew nourishment, in a period of transition, from
the values known from the old kind of society, and again

138 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

from a faith. Newman, more certainly than either, based
tils thinking on a convinced experience of the divine order,
Arnold learned from them, but he had learned, also, from
the reformers who rejected the old kind of society and from
the thinkers who had asserted, against the claims of the
divine order, the supremacy of human reason. For Cole
ridge the idea of Cultivation had at least a vestigial relation
to an actual society: the relation is there in the word, with
its dependence on the social idea of the cultivated man.
For Newman, culture had a reality in experience, as an
element of the divine perfection. Arnold grasped at these
holds, but he had also commitments elsewhere. And it may
of course be argued that, being thus committed, he was
nearer the actual truth. Culture was a process, but he could
not find the material of that process, either, with any con
fidence, in the society of his own day, or, fully, in a recogni
tion of an order that transcended human society. The result
seems to be that, more and more, and against his formal
intention, the process becomes an abstraction. Moreover,
while appearing to resemble an absolute, it has in fact no
absolute ground. The difficulty can be seen in such a para
graph as this:

Perfection will never be reached; but to recognize a
period of transformation when it comes, and to adapt
themselves honestly and rationally to its laws, is per
haps the nearest approach to perfection of which men
and nations are capable. No habits or attachments
should prevent their trying to do this; nor indeed, in
the long run, can they. Human thought, which made
all institutions, inevitably saps them, resting only in
that which is absolute and eternal. 89

The general tone of this is convincing and admirable, but
the final reservation the desperate grasp in the last phrase
at a traditional hold is disabling, once he has conceded so
much. Human thought 'makes' and 'saps* all institutions,
yet must rest, finally, in something 'absolute and eternal':
that is to say, by his own argument, in something above and
beyond Institutions'. In Newman, this position might make
sense; he could at least have said clearly what the 'absolute

J. H. NEWMAN AND MATTHEW ABNOUD 139

and eternal* was. Arnold, however, was caught between
two worlds. He had admitted reason as the critic and de
stroyer of institutions, and so could not rest on the tradi
tional society which nourished Burke. He had admitted
reason *human thought* as the maker of institutions, and
thus could not see the progress of civil society as the work
ing of a divine intention. His way of thinking about institu
tions was in fact relativist, as indeed a reliance on 'the best
that has been thought and written in the world* (and on
that alone) must always be. Yet at the last moment he not
only holds to this, but snatches also towards an absolute:
and both are Culture. Culture became the final critic of
institutions, and the process of replacement and betterment,
yet it was also, at root, beyond institutions. This confusion
of attachment was to be masked by the emphasis of a word.
Arnold is a great and important figure in nineteenth-
century thought. His recognition of *a period of transforma
tion when it comes* was deep and active, as the strength of
his essay on Equality clearly shows. Even the final break
down in his thinking (as I judge it to be) is extremely
important, as the mark of a continuing and genuine con
fusion. We shall, if we are wise, continue to listen to him,
and, when the time comes to reply, we can hardly speak
better than in his own best spirit. For if we centre our
attention on a tradition of thinking rather than on an iso
lated man, we shall not be disposed to underrate what he
did and what he represented, nor to neglect what he urged
us, following him, to do. As he himself wrote:

Culture directs our attention to the natural current
there is in human affairs, and its continual working,
and will not let us rivet our faith upon any one man
and his doings. It makes us see, not only his good side,
but also how much in him was of necessity limited
and transient. . . . 40

CHAPTER VII

ART AND SOCIETY

A. W. Pugin, John Ruskin, William Morris

AN essential hypothesis in the development of the idea of
culture is that the art of a period is closely and necessarily
related to the generally prevalent 'way of life', and further
that, in consequence, aesthetic, moral and social judgements
are closely interrelated. Such a hypothesis is now so gen
erally accepted, as a matter of intellectual habit, that it is
not always easy to remember that it is, essentially, a product
of the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. One
of the most important forms of tihe Hypothesis is, of course,
that of Marx, to which I shall return. But there is another
line, of great importance in nineteenth-century England, in
which the important names are Pugin, Ruskin and Morris.
As an idea, the relation between periods of art and periods
of society is to be found earlier, in Europe, in the work of,
among others, Vico and Herder and Montesquieu. But the
decisive emphasis in England begins in the 18305, and it
is an emphasis which was at once novel and welcome. Sir
Kenneth Clark in The Gothic Revival is explicit about the
novelty:

Standard writers of art criticism Aristotle, Longinus,
and Horace all described art as something imposed,
so to speak, from without. The idea of style as some
thing organically connected with society, something
which springs inevitably from a way of life, does not
occur, as far as I know, in the Eighteenth Century. 1

And that the new emphasis was welcome, a development
which other currents of tMnking had prepared, may be
judged from the extraordinary influence which first Pugin,
and later Ruskin, almost immediately exerted. If we remem
ber the direction of parts of the Romantic theory of art,

AIIT AND SOCIETY j^i

and the examination, in Coleridge and Carlyle, of the re
lations between 'culture' and 'civilization', we shall see that,
in fact, the ground had been very well prepared.

The history of architectore is the history of the world,'
Pugin wrote, in his Apology for the Present Revival of
Christian Architecture in England (1843). ^Different na
tions have given birth to so many various styles of Archi
tecture, each suited to their climate, customs, and religion,*
he had written earlier, in 1835, in Contrasts: or a Parallel
between the Noble Edifices of the Middk Ages, and Corre
sponding Buildings of the Present Day, shewing the Pres
ent Decay of Taste. Pugin was writing, of course, with
evident polemical and practical intent; his concern, as
another title shows, was to define the True Principles of
Pointed or Christian Architecture ( 1841) , so that 'the pres
ent degraded state of ecclesiastical buildings* might be
remedied. In his advocacy of the Gothic style he had, of
course, been widely preceded. His father, A. C. Pugin, had
edited two volumes of Specimens of Gothic Architecture,
and Shaw, Savage and especially James Wyatt had, among
other architects, tried to build in this way. The new element
in the younger Pugin was his insistence that revival of the
style must depend on revival of the feelings from which it
originally sprang: the architectural revival must be part of
a general religious, and truly Catholic, revival. This con
trolling principle is evident in Ms remark in tie Preface to
the second edition of Contrasts: 'revivals of ancient archi
tecture, although erected In, are not buildings of, the nine-
teenlfh century*. Such a judgement serves to distinguish
Pugin from the Gothic Revivalists who had preceded him.
He was not offering Gothic as one of a number of possible
styles from which the competent architect might choose,
but rather as the embodiment of 'true Christian feeling*,
which, understood in this way, might be helped to revive.
It is very curious, of course, to find this principle of the
necessary relation between art and its period being enun
ciated in the context of a revivalist tract. This paradox was
to have its own effect on the subsequent history of 'Gothic*
building. Yet the dominant mediaevalism, here as elsewhere

142 CDLTUBE AND SOCIETY

in nineteenth-century thought, had by-products more im
portant than its formal advocacy. The most important ele
ment in social thinking which developed from the work of
Pugin was the use of the art of a period to judge the quality
of the society that was producing it. To this, Pugin himself
made a notable contribution.

In the text of the Contrasts, he writes, significantly:

The erection of churches, like all that was produced by
zeal or art in ancient days, has dwindled down into a
mere trade. . . . They are erected by men who pon
der between a mortgage, a railroad, or a chapel, as
the best investment of their money, and who, when
they have resolved on relying on the persuasive elo
quence of a cushion-thumping, popular preacher,
erect four walls, with apertures for windows, cram the
same full of seats, which they readily let; and so
greedy after pelf are these chapel-raisers, that they
form dry and spacious vaults underneath, which are
soon occupied, at a good rent, by some wine and
brandy merchant. 2

This kind of extension, from an architectural to a social
judgement, is brilliantly continued in the actual contrasts,
the paired engravings. A contrast of altars is immediately
followed by the Contrasted Residences for the Poor: the one
a Benthamite Panopticon, with its attendant Master, armed
with whip and leg-irons, its diet-sheet of bread, gniel and
potatoes, and its pauper dead being carried away for dis
section; the other a monastery, in a natural relationship
with its surrounding countryside, with its kindly master, its
well-clothed poor, its religious burials, and its diet-sheet of
beef, mutton, bacon, ale and cheese. The 'past and present'
theme occurs again, in social terms, in the contrasted public
conduits, of which the modern version, surmounted by a
lamp-post, is set in front of the police-station: the pump is
locked, and a child who wants to drink is being warned off
by a constable carrying a truncheon. The widest contrast,
however, is between a 'Catholic town in 1440* and 'The
Same Town in 1840'. It is not only that several of the me-

ABT AND SOCIETY 143

diaeval churches have been spoiled, architecturally, and
have been interspersed with bare dissenting chapels. It is
also that the abbey is ruined, and is now bordered by an
ironworks; that the churchyard of St Michael's on the Hill
is now occupied by a 'New Parsonage House and Pleasure
Grounds'; and that in addition to such new institutions as a
'Town Hall and Concert Room' and a 'Socialist Hall of Sci
ence' there are, dominating the foreground, the New Jail
(again a panopticon) , the Gas Works and the Lunatic Asy
lum. From criticizing a change of architecture, Pugin has
arrived at criticizing a civilization; and he does so in terms
that became familiar enough during the remaining part of
the century. The relations with Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris,
and with figures in our own century, are clear and un
mistakable.

Both Ruskin and Morris were, in fact, unkind in their
references to Pugin; but this is mainly due to their differ
ence from him, and from each other, in matters of belief.
Ruskin, for example, wanted to capture Gothic for Protes
tantism, and was therefore bound to oppose Pugin; whereas
for Morris, Pugin's prejudice against anything to do with
the working-class movement was sufficiently distasteful.

Ruskin, more than any other nineteenth-century figure,
is now very difficult to approach. One has indeed to cut
one's way back to him through a mass of irrelevant material
and reactions. The successors of Lytton Strachey have ap
plied to him, as to Carlyle, an almost wholly irresponsible
biographical attention; while his own more interesting writ
ings are comparatively little read. It is worth turning back
to the comment of a contemporary reader, which will in
dicate the more general problem:

I don't know whether you look out for Ruskin's books
whenever they appear. His little book on the Political
Economy of Art contains some magnificent passages,
mixed up with stupendous specimens of arrogant ab
surdity on some economical points. But I venerate him
as one of the great teachers of the day. The grand
doctrines of truth and sincerity in art, and the noble
ness and solemnity of our human Hf e, which he teaches

144 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

with the inspiration of a Hebrew prophet, must be
stirring up young minds in a promising way. 3

The writer is George Eliot, in a letter to Miss Sara Hennell.
If one takes her comment point by point, and sets it beside
the conventional modern reaction, the difficulty of a return
to Ruskin becomes sufficiently apparent. We should, of
course, be far less sure than she was of his 'arrogant ab
surdity on some economical points'. It is true that Ruskin
has now no sort of authority as an economist, but his ap
proach to social and economic problems is very much
nearer our own than is the normal approach of his con
temporaries. With George Eliot's reservation discounted,
however, we should begin a different kind of amendment.
'The grand doctrines of truth and sincerity in art', if indeed
such a formulation meant anything to us at all, would be
merely a cue for our rejection of Ruskin's aesthetics. The
nobleness and solemnity of our human life', when we had
pondered the phrase, would seem a very general thing to
begin teaching upon. 'The inspiration of a Hebrew prophet',
and the 'magnificent passages', indicate only why Ruskin is
now reputed so difficult to read. And the Ruskin Societies
are dead, the books with their extraordinary titles neg
lected, while we occupy ourselves with a discussion of his
sexual life more sterile than any nullity. Yet, without ques
tion, Ruskin must still be read if the tradition is to be under
stood. It does not seem to me (as it does to Dr Leavis)
'fairly easy to say what his place and significance are'. The
reading has to be done, and in relation to the tradition-
otherwise we shall fall into the other error, of Mr Graham
Hough, in assuming that 'the new ideas about the arts and
their relations to religion and the social order all (seem) to
originate somewhere in the dense jungle of Ruskin's works'.
Ruskin is best understood, and necessarily read, as a major
contributor to the development of our complex ideas of
Culture.

Ruskin was an art critic before he was a social critic, but
his work must now be seen as a whole. The worst biogra
phies have put into circulation a number of discreditable

ART AND SOCIETY

motives for his 'transfer of interest* from art to society. It
has been suggested that his social criticism

was a passing-on of the indictment of Effie, a suit for
nullity proclaimed against England. 4

Mr Wilenski, who can see the crudity of this, implies that
the social criticism was the result of Ruskin s failure to cap
ture something called the 'Art Dictatorship' in the fifties.
But in fact the nature of Ruskin's thinking, and of the tra
dition as a whole, made the inclusive examination of both
art and society a quite natural thing. There is, also, suffi
cient evidence of Ruskin's direct reaction to the evils of
industrialism; and it is perhaps we, not Ruskin, who are on
questionable ground when we suppose that social criticism
requires some special (usually disreputable) explanation.
It remains true, however, that Ruskin's social criticism
would not have taken the same form if it had not arisen, as
it did inevitably, from his kind of thinking about the pur
poses of art.

The central nature of Ruskin's concern may be seen in
one of his early definitions of Beauty:

By the term Beauty . . . properly are signified two
things. First, that external quality of bodies . . .
which, whether it occur in a stone, flower, beast, or in
man, is absolutely identical; which , . . may be shown
to be in some sort typical of the Divine attributes, and
which therefore I ... call Typical Beauty: and sec
ondarily, the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of
function in living things, more especially of the joyful
and right exertion of perfect Me in man; and this kind
of beauty I ... call Vital Beauty. 5

Here, indeed, is the basis of his whole work. In his criticism
of art, his standard was always this Typical Beauty*, the
absolute evidence, in works of art, of the 'universal grand
design*. In his social criticism, his concern was with the
'felicitous fulfilment of function in living things', and with
the conditions of the 'joyful and right exertion of perfect
lif e in man'. The absolute standard of perfection in works of
art; the conditions of perfection in man: these are the com-

146 CULTUBJE AND SOCIETY

mon bases of the tradition. Both sides of Raskin's work are
comprised in an allegiance to the same single term, Beauty;
and the idea of Beauty (which in his writings is virtually
interchangeable with Truth) rests fundamentally on belief
in a universal, divinely appointed order. The art criticism
and the social criticism, that is to say, are inherently and
essentially related, not because one follows from the other,
but because both are applications, in particular directions,
of a fundamental conviction.

The purpose of art, according to Ruskin, is to reveal as
pects of the universal *Beauty' or 'Truth'. The. artist is one
who, in Carlyle's words, "reads the open secret of the uni
verse*. Art is not 'imitation', in the sense of illusionist rep
resentation, or an adherence to the rules of models; but Art
is 'imitation*, in the older sense of an embodiment of aspects
of the universal, 'ideal' truth. These essential doctrines were
ready to Ruskin's hand, from Romantic theory, and there
was the additional emphasis, seen in Pugin and the ideas of
The Ecdesiologist and the Camden Society, on the neces
sary goodness (moral goodness) of the artist, charged with
this high function of revelation. Any corruption of the art
ist's nature would blur or distort his capacity for realizing
and communicating the ideal, essential beauty. But, Ruskin
added (and here again he is influenced by the Pugin rela
tion between the quality of a society and the quality of its
art) , it is impossible, finally, for the artist to be good if his
society is corrupt. Ruskin's constant definition of this theme
is now unfashionable, but is still significant.

The art of any country is the exponent of its social and
political virtues. The art, or general productive and
formative energy, of any country, is an exact exponent
of its ethical life. You can have noble art only from
noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their
time and circumstances. 6

The question of the 'goodness* of the artist is, however,
c*t times ambiguous. At times, he must be good in order to
reveal essential Beauty; at other times he is good because
he reveals essential Beauty other criteria of goodness are
irrelevant. The latter will be recognized as characteristic of

ART AND SOCIETY 147

what was later called 'aestheticism', a body of feeling from
which Ruskin is not always distinct. Consider, for example:

As the great painter is not allowed to be indignant or
exclusive, it is not possible for him to nourish his (so-
called) spiritual desires, as it is to an ordinarily virtu
ous person. Your ordinarily good man absolutely
avoids, either for fear of getting harm, or because he
has no pleasure in such places or people, all scenes
that foster vice, and all companies that delight in it.
. . . But you can't learn to paint of blackbirds, nor by
singing hymns. You must be in the wildness of the
midnight masque in the misery of the dark street at
dawn . . .on the moor with the wanderer or the
robber. . . . Does a man die at your feet, your busi
ness is not to help him, but to note the colour of his
lips; does a woman embrace her destruction before
you, your business is not to save her, but to watch how
she bends her arms. T

So extreme a position, of a subsequently familiar kind, is
not, however, Ruskin's normal conclusion. The aberration,
here as in the more general movement, sprang from the
implications of the claim of the artist as an instrument of
revelation, in conflict with a corrupt society: one in which
morality, normally, was little more than negative. Ruskin,
characteristicaEy, insisted on the need for positive spiritual
goodness in artists, and it is only occasionally that he is
betrayed into that substitution of art for life which is, per
haps, always latent in a conception of the artist as one who
reveals a more than ordinary reality. Certainly, as a rule,
he did not grant exemption to artists from common ethical
considerations. He insisted, rather, on the contrary: on the
artist's r61e as an agent of general perfection, and on the
dependence of this on his positive personal goodness.

So moral an emphasis became unfashionable, hut Ruskin,
although he described the greatest art as that which was
'capable of arousing the greatest number of the greatest
ideas*, did not in fact separate the 'great ideas* from the
actual business of painting:

1^8 CULTUKE AND SOCIETY

It is well when we have strong moral or poetical feel
ing manifested in painting, to mark this as the best
part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a
thing of small account the painter's language in which
that feeling is conveyed; for if that language be not
good and lovely, the man indeed may be a just moral
ist or a great poet, but he is not a painter, and it was
wrong of him to paint. ... If the man be a painter
indeed, and have the gift of colours and lines, what
is in him will come from his hand freely and faith
fully; and the language itself is so difficult and so vast,
that the mere possession of it argues that the man is
great, and that his works are worth reading. . . .
Neither have I ever seen a good expressional work
without high artistical merit; and that this is ever
denied is only owing to the narrow view which men
are apt to take both of expression and of art; a nar
rowness consequent on their own especial practice and
habits of thought. 8

Thus a man is not a good artist merely because he has good
ideas, but, rather, the artist's apprehension of good ideas is
an Intrinsic element of his artist's skill. The quality of seeing,
the special quality of apprehension of essential form: these
are the particular faculties through which the artist reveals
the essential truth of things. His goodness, as artist, depends
on these special qualities; but then, to communicate, he de
pends on the existence of these same qualities, in some de
gree, in others; he depends, that is to say, on their active
presence in society. Here is a main line to RusMn's radical
criticisms of nineteenth-century society: for he finds such
qualities generally lacking, prevented from emergence by
an imposed mechanical habit of apprehension. In these cir
cumstances, a great national art was impossible.

Once again, a particular kind of experience, here most
powerfully identified with the arts, is being used as a stand
ard of the health of a civilization. In a civilization in which
such kinds of experience are being constantly overlaid by
the attitudes of industrialism, Ruskin argues not only that a
national art is impossible, but that the civilization itself is

ART AND SOCIETY 149

therefore bad. The key words of the opposition of kinds of
experience are, once again, mechanical and organic. For
what the artist perceives is 'organic', not 'external', form.
The universal life which he reveals is that organic life,
Ruskin's 'Typical Beauty*, which is common throughout the
universe, and is in fact the form of God. The artist sees this
typical beauty as a whole process: art is not merely the
product of an 'aesthetic* faculty, but an operation of the
whole being. The artist's goodness is also his 'wholeness',
and the goodness of a society lies in its creation of the
conditions for 'wholeness of being'. The decisive stage in
Ruskin's formulation of this position was in the work pre
paratory to his Stones of Venice. He was judging artists by
their degree of 'wholeness', and, when he found variations
of degree, he sought to explain them by corresponding
variations in the 'wholeness* of man's life in society:

so forcing me into the study of the history of Venice
herself; and through that into what else I have traced
or told of the laws of national strength and virtue. 9

The transition to social criticism is then quite natural,
within the forms of Ruskin's thinking. It is best understood,
as I have indicated, in the context of a general transition
between thinking about art and thinking about society: the
transition which is marked, in all its complexity of reference,
by the changes in the meanings of culture. The 'organic
society*, the 'whole way of life', and similar phrases, are
certainly open to charges of obscurity, but they are not in
any case likely to be understood except by reference to
conceptions of experience, largely drawn from the practice
and study of art, which are their basis and substance. We
have seen how the idea of 'wholeness', as a distinguishing
quality of the mind of the artist, led Ruskin into a criticism
of society by the same criterion, which was in fact to be
most influential. We must now see how his conception of
Beauty directed his continuing social thinking. The artist's
standard was 'Typical Beauty*, but, rekted to this, and ex
tending beyond the sphere of art, was the other category,
'Vital Beauty':

15O CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

the felicitous fulfilment of function in living things,
more especially of the joyful and right exertion of per
fect Me in man. 10

This, throughout Ruskin's work, was to be the standard by
which a society must be judged: whether in its essential
order it created the conditions for such a fulfilment. The
relation of such a standard to the ideas of Burke, Coleridge,
Carlyle and Arnold is evident: the central word of all these
ideas, in their reference to society, is the perfection of man.
In Ruskin, it will be noted, it is the exertion, rather than
the discovery, of 'perfect life in man'; and it is 'felicitous
fulfilment of function the word function carrying an ines
capable reference to the idea of design. It is here, as in all
generally conservative criticism of laissez-faire society, that
the greatest difficulty shows itself. If Ruskin's criticisms of
the nineteenth-century economy are examined piecemeal,
he may at times be seen as a socialist forerunner as indeed
he has been often described. It is perhaps true that the
ideas of an 'organic* society are an essential preparation for
socialist theory, and for the more general attention to a
'whole way of life*, in opposition to theories which consist
ently reduce social to individual questions, and which sup
port legislation of an individualist as opposed to a collec-
tivist land. But the theories can hardly be abstracted from
actual social situations, and the 'organic' theory has in fact
been used in support of very different, and even opposing,
causes. The detail of much of Ruskin's criticism of a laissez-
faire society was in fact perfectly acceptable to socialists;
but the ideas of design and function, as he expressed them,
supported not a socialist idea of society but rather an au
thoritarian idea, which included a very emphatic hierarchy
of classes. One who learned much from him, J. A. Hobson,
put this point precisely:

This organic conception everywhere illuminates his
theory and his practical constructive policy: it gives
order to his conception of the different industrial
classes and to the relations of individual members of
each class: it releases him from the mechanical atomic
notion of equality, and compels him to develop an or-

ABT AND SOCIETY 151

derly system of interdependence sustained by author
ity and obedience. 11

In this respect Ruskin is very far from socialism., as, for
similar reasons, was Carlyle. It is, however, perhaps one of
the most important facts about English social thinking in
the nineteenth century that there grew up, in opposition to
a laissez-faire society, this organic conception, stressing in
terrelation and interdependence. This conception was at one
point the basis of an attack on the conditions of men in
Industrial production', the 'cash-nexus* their only active re
lation, and on the claims of middle-class political democ
racy. Meanwhile, at another point it was the basis of an
attack on industrial capitalism, and on the limitations of
triumphant middle-class liberalism. One kind of conserva
tive thinker, and one kind of socialist thinker, seemed thus
to use the same terms, not only for criticizing a laissez-faire
society, but also for expressing the idea of a superior soci
ety. This situation has persisted, in that 'organic' is now a
central term both in this kind of conservative thinking and
in Marxist thinking. The common enemy (or, if it is pre
ferred, the common defender of the true faith) is Lib
eralism.

Burke was perhaps the last serious thinker who could
find the 'organic* in an existing society. As the new indus
trial society established itself, critics like Carlyle and Rus-
kiii could find the 'organic* image only in a backward look:
this is the basis of their 'mediaevalism*, and of that of others.
It was not, in this tradition, until Morris that this image
acquired a distinctly future reference the image of social
ism. Even in Morris, as we shall see, the backward reference
is still important and active. RusMn, like Carlyle, was one
of the destroyers of Liberalism: this may now be seen as
his merit. It is for his destructive social criticism that he is
important

The basic indictment is in the chapter On the Nature of
Gothic;

The great cry that rises from all our manufacturing

cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very
deed for thisthat we manufacture everything there

152 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel,

and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten,

to strengthen, to refine or to form a single living spirit,
never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all
the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can
be met only in one way: not by teaching or preaching,
for to teach them is but to show them their misery,
and to preach to them, if we do nothing more than
preach, is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right
understanding on the part of all classes, of what kinds
of labour are good for men, raising them, and making
them happy. 12

*A right understanding of what kinds of labour*: this is the
fundamental emphasis. Not labour for profit, or for produc
tion, or for the smooth functioning of the existing order;
but the 'right kind of labour* *the felicitous fulfilment of
function in living things*. A society is to be governed by no
other purposes than what is 'good for men, raising them,
and making them happy* 'the joyful and right exertion of
perfect life in man*. Immediately, as part of the same argu
ment, Rusldn introduces his criterion of 'wholeness*:

We have much studied and much perfected, of late,
the great civilized invention of the division of labour;
only we have given it a false name. It is not, truly
speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men:
Divided into mere segments of men broken into small
fragments and crumbs of life. . . . You are put to
stern choice in this matter. You must either make a
tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make
both. ... It is verily this degradation of the opera
tive into a machine, which, more than any other evil
of the times, is leading the mass of the nations every
where into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for
a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to
themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth, and
against nobility, is not forced from them either by the
pressure of famine, or by the sting of mortified pride.
These do much, and have done much, in all ages; but
the foundations of society were never yet shaken as

ART AJSDD SOCIETY 153

they are at this day. It Is not that men are ill fed, but

that they have no pleasure in the work hy which they
make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the
only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained
by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot en
dure their own; for they feel that the land of labour to
which they are condemned is verily a degrading one,
and makes them less than men. 13

This emphasis on the land of labour* created by an indus
trial system was to be widely adopted. It is the basis of
Ruskin's social values: the contrast between the land of
labour' which the system made necessary, and the 'right
kind of labour'. The contrast is supported by his important
analysis of Wealth. Wealth, he argues, is that which 'avails
for life*. It is, as everyone agrees, the possession of 'goods',
but 'goods* cannot be a neutral word; it involves, neces
sarily, a positive valuation. Wealth is not automatically
equivalent with possessions and production, for of these
some part are Wealth, and some part (in the useful word
that Ruskin coined) Ulth. Wealth is 'the possession of useful
things, which we can use'. And 'usefulness' is determined
by 'Intrinsic Value*, that is to say the extent to which it
'avails for life*. Intrinsic value is

independent of opinion, and of quantity. Think what
you will of it, gain how much you may of it, the value
of the thing itself is neither greater nor less. For ever
it avails, or avails not; no estimate can raise, no disdain
repress, the power which it holds from the Maker of
things and of men. 14

Value is intrinsic because it is a part of the 'universal grand
design*. It must not, in this sense, be confused with 'ex
change value*, which is only the price its possessor will take
for some labour or commodity. Intrinsic value is not deter
mined by this, which is a temporary and often defective
estimate. Value rests properly only in the fitness of such
labour or commodity as a means to 'the joyful and right
exertion of perfect life in man*.
This position was necessarily a fundamental challenge

154 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

to the nineteenth-century system of production, and to the
laws of political economy' which supported it. Value,
wealth, labour were taken out of the jurisdiction of the law
of supply and demand, and related to a wholly different
social judgement. In asserting this Ruskin was also, neces
sarily, asserting the idea of a social order . At the root of all
his thinking is his idea of 'function* the fulfilment of each
man's part in the general design. Such a fulfilment was only
possible if society was regulated in terms of the general
design: a society must regulate itself by attention to In
trinsic values' primarily, and anything which prevented this
must be swept away. But a system of production geared
only to the laws of supply and demand made regulation
impossible, for it reduced men to available labour and thus
made impossible any 'whole fulfilment' of their ultimate
function as human beings. There could be only one right
economy: that which led men to *the joyful and right ex
ertion of perfect life'. Political economy was

neither an art nor a science; but a system of conduct
and legislature, founded on the sciences, directed by
the arts, and impossible, except under certain condi
tions of moral culture. 15

To these "conditions of moral culture', and to an economic
order morally determined, the principal obstacle was an
economic system based on competition:

Government and Co-operation are . . . the Laws of
Life. Anarchy and Competition the Laws of Death. 16

Thus, the contrast between culture and anarchy was again
made, but now in terms that directly challenged the basic
principles of nineteenth-century industrial economy. Not
only was the supply of real "wealth* impossible under such
conditions: production, at hazard, being both wealth and
illth. But also the effects of competition extended to con
sumption. Wealth was 'the possession of useful articles
which we can use\ ir So that even if the existing system
always produced useful articles, the kind of society which
it also produced made just distribution and wise consump
tion difficult or impossible. And since 'intrinsic value' de-

ART AND SOCIETY 155

pended not only on the value of the thing in itself, but, by
its relation to 'function' in the general design, on its right
and valuable use, the question of the wealth of a society
could not be settled by attention to production only, but
necessarily involved the whole Me of a society. A society
had to be judged in terms of all its making and using, and
in terms of all the human activities and relationships which
the methods of manufacture and consumption brought into
existence.

A good example of Ruskin's assertion of this principle is
contained in a speech made at Bradford:

You must remember always that your business, as
manufacturers, is to form the market, as much as to
supply it. If, in short-sighted and reckless eagerness
for wealth, you catch at every humour of the populace
as it shapes itself into momentary demandif, in jeal-
lous rivalry with neighbouring States, or with other
producers, you try to attract attention by singularities,
novelties, and gaudinesses, to make every design an
advertisement, and pilfer every idea of a successful
neighbour's, that you may insidiously imitate it, or
pompously eclipse no good design will ever be possi
ble to you, or perceived by you. You may, by accident,
snatch the market; or, by energy, command it; you
may obtain the confidence of the public, and cause
the ruin of opponent houses; or you may, with equal
justice of fortune, be ruined by them. But whatever
happens to you, this, at least, is certain, that the whole
of your life will have been spent in corrupting public
taste and encouraging public extravagance. Every
preference you have won by gaudiness must have
been based on the purchaser's vanity; every demand
you have created by novelty has fostered in the con
sumer a habit of discontent; and when you retire into
inactive life, you may, as a subject of consolation for
your declining years, reflect that precisely according to
the extent of your past operations, your life has been
successful in retarding the arts, tarnishing the virtues,
and confusing the manners of your country. 18

156 CUCLTUBE AND SOCIETY

Tills is Ruskin at his best, and the passage, for all the cal
culation of its rhetoric, comes through to our own century
and our own social situation with all the penetration of
genius. What is interesting also is that Ruskin is here dis
cussing design 'industrial design' as we should now call it.
The argument is a practical example of his refusal to treat
aesthetic questions in isolation: good design in industry, he
argued, depended on the right organization of industry, and
this in turn, through labour and consumption, on the right
organization of society. He made the point in a negative
way, in another speech at Bradford, where he had been
invited to lecture in the Town Hal on the best style of
building for a new Exchange:

I do not care about this Exchange, because you don't.
. . . You think you may as well have the right thing
for your money. You know there are a great many odd
styles of architecture about; you don't want to do any
thing ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as a
respectable architectural man-milliner; and you send
for me, that I may tell you the leading fashion; and
what is, in our shops, for the moment, the newest and
sweetest thing in pinnacles. 19

But architecture was the expression of a whole way of life,
and the only appropriate style for their Exchange would be
one

built to your great Goddess of 'Getting-on*. ... I can
only at present suggest decorating its frieze with pend
ant purses; and making its pillars broad at the base, for
the sticking of bills. 20

The tone of this sufficiently indicates the nature of Ras
kin's attack on nineteenth-century society. There is some
thing of Pugin in it, and something of Arnold; but, more
certainly than either of these, Ruskin pressed home his
criticism to the actual economic system which seemed to
him to be at the root of the matter. Arnold's is very much
more the flexible intelligence, but he falls notably short of
Ruskin in terms of penetration. The difference may be seen,

ART AND SOCIETY 157

perhaps, in the fact that when the essays composing Unto
this Last were published in the Comhill, the editor discon
tinued them because of violent protest and indignation;
whereas Culture and Anarchy, when started through the
same medium, was at least tolerated. Ruskin, in the opinion
of his contemporaries, was not only 'stupendously and ar
rogantly absurd ... on some economical points'; he was
writing in a deliberate attempt to alter an economic sys
tem. Arnold on the other hand, where he was opposed, was
blamed as a prig; the "bookish and pedantic* dismissal was
easily available, and the criticism did not hurt in the same
way. Yet both Arnold and Buskin are, in the end, victims
of abstraction in their social criticism: Arnold, because he
shirked extending his criticism of ideas to criticism of the
social and economic system from which they proceeded;
Ruskin, as becomes apparent in his proposals for reform,
because he was committed to an idea of 'inherent design'
as a model for society a commitment which led him into
a familiar type of general replanning of society on paper,
without close attention to existing forces and institutions.
His criticism is always close, because he saw industriaHsm
and hated it. His proposals for reform, on the other hand,
are abstract and dull.

The basic idea of 'organic form* produced, in Ruskin's
thinking about an ideal society, the familiar notion of a pa
ternal State. He wished to see a rigid class-structure cor
responding to his ideas of 'function*. It was the business of
government, he argued, to produce, accumulate, and dis
tribute real wealth, and to regulate and control its con
sumption. Government was to be guided in this by the prin
ciples of intrinsic value which became apparent in any right
reading of the universal design. Democracy must be re
jected: for its conception of the equality of men was not
only untrue; it was also a disabling denial of order and
'function*. The ruling class must be the existing aristocracy,
properly trained in its function:

The office of the upper classes ... as a body, is to
keep order among their inferiors, and raise them al-

3.58 CUXTUBE AND SOCIETY

ways to the nearest level with themselves of which
those inferiors are capable, 21

This of course is Carlyle again, hut it is interesting to notice
also that RusMn's definition of the three functional orders
of aristocracy corresponds exactly with that of Coleridge:
first estate, landowners; second estate, merchants and
manufacturers; third estate, 'scholars and artists' (Cole
ridge's 'clerisy'). These three groups, working together,
would ensure order, initiate lionest production and just dis
tribution', and, by the training of taste, develop 'wise con
sumption'. All would be educated by the State, and receive
salaries from it, for the proper performance of these func
tions. Below this ruling class, the basic form of society
would be the 'guild*, with a variety of grades for each kind
of work. The guilds would take over the functions of the
existing capitalist employer, and would regulate conditions
of work and quality of product. Finally, at the base of this
edifice would be a class whose business was the 'necessarily
inferior labour'. This class would include criminals, men on
probation, and a certain number of Volunteers* from the
aristocracy. The Commonwealth thus established would en
sure 'felicitous fulfilment of function', and the 'joyful and
right exertion of perfect We in man'! Moreover, it would
rest

upon a foundation of eternal law, which nothing can
alter nor overthrow. 22

Ruskin's scheme has its relations with many earlier and
later conceptions of society. But the problem, when it had
been drawn up, was what to do about getting it imple
mented. There was no force to which Ruskin could appeal,
and increasingly, as he got older, he narrowed his range to
that of local, small-scale experiment. The Guild of Saint
George was established, with himself as Master; Carlyle,
who had always a shrewd sense of the practical, said at
once that such a thing was nonsense. It was not, however,
Rusldn's personal nonsense alone; this is where the bio
graphical emphasis is most misleading. This kind of dead
lock, followed by absurd attempts to break it, is really a

ART AND SOCIETY 159

general phenomenon. The image of a society organized in
terms of value is recurring and inevitable. In Ruskin, as in
so many others, the failure was one of realization. His so
ciety was an image without energy, because the necessary
social commitment could not or would not be made. And
because this is a general phenomenon, we have to look at
the deadlock very carefully. It is not enough to rationalize
it and blame Ruskin for, say, 'mediaevalism*. In fact, Rus
kin knew quite well that mediaevalism was inadequate:

We don't want either the life or the decorations of the
thirteenth century back again; and the circumstances
with which you must surround your (sc, Bradford)
workmen are those simply of happy modern English
lif e . . . The designs you have now to ask for from
your workmen are such as will make modern English
life beautiful. All that gorgeousness of the Middle
Ages, beautiful as it sounds in description, noble as in
many respects it was in reality, had, nevertheless, for
foundation and for end, nothing but the pride of life
the pride of the so-called superior classes; a pride
which supported itself by violence and robbery, and
led in the end to the destruction both of the arts them
selves and the States in which they flourished. 23

This was a just recognition that tibe real issues were always
immediate and contemporary, and that the establishment
of a new kind of society had to begin in conditions of the
old anarchy which it sought to replace. Beyond this recog
nition, however, Ruskin cannot help us. His remarkable and
admirable enquiry into the values of his society brought us
to this point, but could not take us past it. And it is pre
cisely here that our attention is drawn to the man most im
mediately and deeply influenced by Ruskin, William Mor
ris. The significance of Morris in this tradition, is that he
sought to attach its general values to an actual and growing
social force: that of the organized working class. This was
the most remarkable attempt that had so far been made to
break the general deadlock.

Morris's own retrospective account of his development is
clear and interesting:

160 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Before the uprising of modern Socialism almost all in
telligent people either were, or professed themselves
to be, quite contented with the civilization of this cen
tury. Again, almost all of these really were thus con
tented, and saw nothing to do but to perfect the said
civilization by getting rid of a few ridiculous survivals
of the barbarous ages. 24 *

(This, evidently, is Morris's judgement of the utilitarian
liberals.)

To be short, this was the Whig frame of mind, natural
to the modern prosperous middle-class men, who, in
fact, as far as mechanical progress is concerned, have
nothing to ask for, if only Socialism would leave them
alone to enjoy their plentiful style. But besides these
contented ones there were others who were not really
contented, but had a vague sentiment of repulsion to
the triumph of civilization, but were coerced into si
lence by the measureless power of Whiggery. 246

(Civilization, in this last sentence, is used in a Coleridgian
sense, as a limited term. In the previous sentence, the limit
ing function of mechanical is also evident. These are the
traditional terms.)

Lastly, there were a few who were in open rebellion
against the said Whiggery a few, say two, Carlyle
and Ruskin. The latter, before my days of practical
socialism, was my master towards the ideal. 240

Thus Morris acknowledges both the tradition and his own
extension of it He now restates the grounds of the opposi
tion to 'civilization':

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the
leading passion of my Me has been and is hatred of
modern civilization. . . . What shall I say concerning
its mastery of and its waste of mechanical power, its
commonwealth so poor, its enemies of the common
wealth so rich, its stupendous organization for the
misery of life! Its contempt of simple pleasures, which
everyone could enjoy but for its folly? Its eyeless vul-

ABT AND SOCIETY l6l

garity which has destroyed art, the one certain solace
of labour? . . . The struggles of mankind for many
ages had produced nothing but this sordid, aimless,
ugly confusion; the immediate future seemed to me
likely to intensify all the present evils by sweeping
away the last survivals of the days before the dull
squalor of civilization had settled down on the world.
This was a bad look-out indeed, and, if I may mention
myself as a personality and not as a mere type, espe
cially so to a man of my disposition, careless of meta
physics and religion, as well as of scientific analysis,
but with a deep love of the earth and the life on it,
and a passion for the history of the past of mankind.
Think of it! Was it all to end in a counting-house on
the top of a cinder-heap, with Podsnap's drawing-room
In the offing, and a Whig committee dealing out cham
pagne to the rich and margarine to the poor in such
convenient proportions as would make all men con
tented together, though the pleasure of the eyes was
gone from the world, and the place of Homer was to
be taken by Huxley . 24d

This kind of opposition is by now very familiar, and we
can see in it elements of Carlyle, Ruskin and Pugin, and of
the popularization of these ideas in Dickens. There is also,
significantly, the anti-scientific element: the Romantic prej
udice that a mechanical civilization had been created by
a mechanical science, and that science was attempting to
substitute for art. One would have expected Morris to re
member, as he elsewhere insisted, that the offered substi
tute for art was bad art; and that it was not scientific en
quiry (however indifferent to it Morris might personally
be) but the organization of economic life, which had
produced the misery and the vulgarity. Keeping this point
aside, we pass to Morris's important new emphasis:

So there I was in for a fine pessimistic end of life, if
it had not somehow dawned on me that amidst all this
filth of civilization the seeds of a great change, what
we others call Social-Revolution, were beginning to
germinate. . . . (This) prevented me, luckier than

l62 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

many others of artistic perceptions, from crystallizing
into a mere railer against 'progress* on the one hand,
and on the other from wasting time and energy in any
of the numerous schemes by which the quasi-artistic
of the middle classes hope to make art grow when it
has no longer any root, and thus I became a practical
Socialist. . . . Surely any one who professes to think
that the question of art and cultivation must go be
fore that of the knife and fork (and there are some
who do propose that) does not understand what art
means, or how that its roots must have a soil of a thriv
ing and unanxious lif e. Yet it must be remembered that
civilization has reduced the workman to such a skinny
and pitiful existence, that he scarcely knows how to
frame a desire for any lif e much better than that which
he now endures perforce. It is the province of art to
set the true ideal of a full and reasonable life before
him, a life to which the perception and creation of
beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that is, shall be
felt to be as necessary to man as his daily bread, and
that no man, and no set of men, can be deprived of
this except by mere opposition, which should be re
sisted to the utmost. 25

The social revolution, then, was to be the answer to the
deadlock of the 'railers against progress'. The priority of
'cultivation* is set aside, in terms that remind one of Cob-
bett. Yet, unlike Cobbett, Morris uses the idea of culture,
in particular in its embodiment in art, as a positive criterion:
'the true ideal of a full and reasonable life*. Like Cobbett,
Morris would have nothing set as a priority over the claims
of working men to an improvement in their conditions; but
unlike Cobbett, who set his objective in terms of a remem
bered society, Morris, like Blake or Raskin, sets his social
objective in terms of the fulness of life which art especially
reveals.

Morris's principal opponent, in fact, was Arnold. The
word 'culture*, because it was associated in his mind witih
Arnold's conclusions, is usually roughly handled:

In the thirty years during which I have known Oxford

ABT AKD SOCIETY 163

more damage has been done to art (and therefore to

literature) by Oxford 'culture' than centuries of profes
sors could repair for, indeed, it is irreparable. These
coarse brutalities of light and leading' make education
stink in the nostrils of thoughtful persons, and ... are
more likely than is Socialism to drive some of us mad.
... I say that to attempt to teach literature with one
hand while it destroys history with the other is a be
wildering proceeding on the part of 'culture'. 26

The point of this was Morris's opposition to the 'moderniza
tion' of Oxford:

I wish to ask if it is too late to appeal to the mercy of
the 'Dons' to spare the few specimens of ancient town
architecture which they have not yet had time to de
stroy. . . . Oxford thirty years ago, when I first knew
it, was full of these treasures; but Oxford 'culture',
cynically contemptuous of the knowledge which it
does not know, and steeped to the lips in the com
mercialism of the day, has made a clean sweep of most
of them. 27

As so often, a particular argument is here entangled with a
much more general judgement. This is very typical of Mor
ris's method, which is often no more than a kind of gen
eralized swearing. Yet the general argument is there, when
he troubles to control it. Oxford was for him a test-case, on
the issue whether culture could be saved from commercial
ism by isolating it:

There are of the English middle class, today . . . men
of the highest aspirations towards Art, and of the
strongest will; men who are most deeply convinced of
the necessity to civilization of surrounding men's lives
with beauty; and many lesser men, thousands for what
I know, refined and cultivated, follow them and praise
their opinions: but both the leaders and the led are
incapable of saving so much as half a dozen commons
from the grasp of inexorable Commerce: they are as
helpless in spite of their culture and their genius as if
they were just so many overworked shoemakers: less

164 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

lucky than King Midas, our green fields and clear wa
ters, nay the very air we breathe, are turned not to
gold (which might please some o us for an hour
maybe) but to dirt; and to speak plainly we know full

we! that under the present gospel of Capital not only
there is no hope of bettering it, but that things grow
worse year by year, day by day. 28

For indeed, Morris argues, the commercial habits of the
middle class can destroy even those things which many in
dividual members of the middle-class value. It is this com
mercialism which has destroyed even such a centre of al
ternative values as Oxford:

What is it, for instance, that has destroyed the Rouen,
the Oxford of my elegant poetic regret? Has it per
ished for the benefit of the people, either slowly yield
ing to the growth of intelligent change and new happi
ness? or has it been, as it were, thunderstricken by the
tragedy which mostly accompanies some great new
birth? Not so. Neither phalangstere nor dynamite has
swept its beauty away, its destroyers have not been
either the philanthropist or the Socialist, the coopera-
tor or the anarchist. It has been sold, and at a cheap
price indeed: muddled away by the greed and incom
petence of fools who do not know what life and pleas
ure mean, who will neither take them themselves nor
let others have them. 29

To the constant question of this tradition 'can the middle
classes regenerate themselves?* Morris returned a decided
No. The middle classes cannot or will not change the con
sequences of industrialism; they will only try to escape
them, in one of two ways. Either:

Men get rich now in their struggles not to be poor, and
because their riches shield them from suffering from
the horrors which are a necessary accompaniment of
the existence of rich men; e.g., the sight of slums, the
squalor of a factory country, the yells and evil lan
guage of drunken and brutalized poor people. 30

ART AND SOCIETY 165

This way, an energetic entry into commercialism in order
to escape its consequences, is a kind of Moral Sinking Fund,
which continues to be heavily subscribed. The other way
is the way of 'minority culture*:

Nothing made by man's hand can be indifferent: it
must be either beautiful and elevating, or ugly and
degrading; and those things that are without art are
so aggressively; they wound it by their existence, and
they are now so much in the majority that the works
of art we are obliged to set ourselves to seek for,
whereas the other things are the ordinary companions
of our everyday life; so that if those who cultivate art
intellectually were inclined never so much to wrap
themselves in their special gifts and their high culti
vation, and so live happily, apart from other men, and
despising them, they could not do so: they are as it
were living in an enemy's country; at every turn there
is something lying in wait to offend and vex their nicer
sense and educated eyes: they must share in the gen
eral discomfort and I am glad of it. 31

The cultivated were indeed 'aliens', as Arnold had called
them, but they were helpless to prevent further damage,
even to themselves. Forty years of publicized revival of the
arts had shown, Morris argued, not an improvement in the
quality of things seen, but even a deterioration:

The world is everywhere growing uglier and more
commonplace, in spite of the conscious and very stren
uous efforts of a small group of people towards the
revival of art, which are so obviously out of joint with
the tendency of the age, that while the uncultivated
have not even heard of them, the mass of the cultivated
look upon them as a joke, and even that they are now
beginning to get tired of. 32

Art, Morris argued, in line with his tradition, depends on
the quality of the society which produces it. There is no
salvation in

art for art's sake ... of (which) a school . . . does,
in a way, theoretically at least, exist at present. Its

l66 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

watchword (is) a piece of slang that does not mean
the harmless thing it seems to mean . . . An art culti
vated professedly by a few, and for a few, who would
consider it necessarya duty, if they could admit du
tiesto despise the common herd, to hold themselves
aloof from all that the world has been straggling for
from the first, to guard carefully every approach to
their palace of art ... that art at last will seem too
delicate a thing for even the hands of the initiated to
touch; and the initiated must at last sit still and do
nothing to the grief of no one. 83

The hope for art was not here, but in the belief that

the cause of Art is the cause of the people. . . . One
day we shall win back Art, that is to say the pleasure
of life; win back Art again to our daily labour. 84

This, at the end of the century, is a rejection of the special
ization of 'Art' which was common at its beginning. But
the terms of the rejection are in part a result of the spe
cialization. In particular, Morris profits from Ruskin's think-
ing about art and labour, as here:

Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not
worth making; or which must be made by labour de
grading to the makers. . . . Simple as that proposition
is . . . it is a direct challenge to the deatib to the pres
ent system of labour in civilized countries. . . . The
aim of art (is) to destroy the curse of labour by mak
ing work the pleasurable satisfaction of our impulse
towards energy, and giving to that energy hope of pro
ducing something worth the exercise. 85

Art had become a particular quality of labour. Delight in
work had been widely destroyed by the machine-system of
production, but, Morris argued, it was the system, rather
than the machines as such, which must be blamed.

If the necessary reasonable work be of a mechanical
land, I must be helped to do it by a machine, not to
cheapen my labour, but so that as little time as pos
sible may be spent upon it. ... I know that to some

ABT AND SOCIETY iy

cultivated people, people of the artistic turn of mind,
machinery is particularly distasteful . . . (but) it is
the allowing machines to be our masters and not our
servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays. In
other words, it is the token of the terrible crime we
have fallen into of using our control of the powers of
Nature for the purpose of enslaving people, we care
less meantime of how much happiness we rob their
lives of. 36

That Morris could feel like this is of considerable impor
tance. He was himself a hand-craftsman, and he had a re
spect born from experience for work of that kind. In his
Utopian writings, the removal of machines from the proc
ess of work is often emphasized. Yet the reaction 'Morris-
handicrafts get rid of the machines' is as misleading as the
reaction 'Ruskin Gothic mediaevalism*. The regressive ele
ments are present in Morris, as they were in RusHn. These
elements seek to compensate for the difficulties in the way
of practical realization of certain qualities of life; and be
cause their function is compensatory, they are often senti
mental. Yet, although their reference is to the past, their
concern is with the present and the future. When we stress,
in Morris, the attachment to handicrafts, we are, in part,
rationalizing an uneasiness generated by the scale and na
ture of his social criticism. Morris wanted the end of the
capitalist system, and the institution of socialism, so that
men could decide for themselves how their work should be
arranged, and where machinery was appropriate. It was
obviously convenient to many of his readers, and to many
of Buskin's readers, to construe all this as a campaign to
end machine-production. Such a campaign could never be
more than an affectation, but it is less compromising than
Morris's campaign to end capitalism, which lands one di
rectly in the heat and bitterness of political struggle. It is
most significant that Morris should have been diluted in
this way. The dilution stresses what are really the weaker
parts of his work, and neglects what is really strong and
alive. For my own part, I would willingly lose The Dream
of John Ball and the romantic socialist songs and even News

i68 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

from Nowhere- in all of which the weaknesses of Morris's
general poetry are active and disabling, if to do so were the
price of retaining and getting people to read such smaller
things as How we Live, and How we might Live, The Aims
of Art, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, and A Factory as it
might be. The change of emphasis would involve a change
in Morris's status as a writer, but such a change is critically
inevitable. There is more life in the lectures, where one
feels that the whole man is engaged in the writing, than
in any of the prose and verse romances. These seem so
clearly the product of a fragmentary consciousness of that
very state of rnind which Morris was always trying to ana
lyse. Morris is a fine political writer, in the broadest sense,
and it is on that, finally, that his reputation will rest. The
other and larger part of his literary work bears witness only
to the disorder which he felt so acutely. He was not a Hop
kins to make art 'when the time seemed unpropitious'. The
nearest figure to him, in his own century, is Cobbett: with
the practice of visual instead of rural arts as the controlling
sanity from which the political insights sprang. And as with
Cobbett, we come to accept the impatience and the ritual
swearing as the price of the vitality, which has its own

It remains to look briefly at Morris's socialism, since it
grew out of the tradition which we have been examining.
He is often mentioned by modern members of the Labour
Party, but usually in terms that suggest a very limited ac
quaintance with his actual ideas. He is, for instance, some
thing very different from an orthodox Fabian. Socialism,
for him, is not merely

substituting business-like administration in the inter
ests of the public for the old Whig muddle of laissez-
faire backed up by coercion. 37

This was the socialism the utilitarians had come to, but
Morris, always, applied to socialism the modes of judge
ment which had been developed in opposition to utilitari
anism. This, for example: Socialism might

gain higher wages and shorter working hours for the

ART AND SOCIETY l6g

working men themselves: industries may be worked
by municipalities for the benefit both of producers
and consumers. Working-people's houses may be im
proved, and their management taken out of the hands
of commercial speculators. In all this I freely admit a
great gain, and am glad to see schemes tried which
would lead to it. But great as the gain would be, the
ultimate good of it . . . would, I think, depend on how
such reforms were done; in what spirit; or rather what
else was being done, while these were going on. . . , 38

This is a familiar kind of argument, from the tradition, and
Morris confirms it in its usual terms:

The great mass of what most non-socialists at least
consider at present to be socialism, seems to me noth
ing more than a machinery of socialism, which I think
it probable that socialism must use in its militant con
dition; and which I think it may use for some time
after it is practically established; but does not seem to
me to be of its essence. 39

Yet the result of this point of view is not modification of
the Socialist idea, but its emphasis. Morris wonders

whether, in short, the tremendous organization of civi
lized commercial society is not playing the cat and
mouse game with us socialists. Whether the Society
of Inequality might not accept the quasi-socialist ma
chinery above mentioned, and work it for the purpose
of upholding that society in a somewhat shorn condi
tion, maybe, but a safe one. . . . The workers better
treated, better organized, helping to govern them
selves, but with no more pretence to equality with the
rich, nor any more hope for it than they have now. 40

This insight into what has been perhaps the actual course
of events since his death is a measure of Morris's quality
as a political thinker. Yet it is no more than an application,
under new circumstances, of the kind of appraisal which
the century's thinking about the meanings of culture had
made available. The arts defined a quality of living which it

I/O CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

was the whole purpose o political change to make possible:

I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have met
together to further are necessary to the life of man,
if the progress of civilization is not to be as causeless
as the turning of a wheel that makes nothing. 41

Socialist change was the means to a recovery of purpose.
The limitation of such change to 'machinery* would only
be possible

on 'the grounds that the working people have ceased
to desire real socialism and are contented with some
outside show of it joined to an increase in prosperity
enough to satisfy the cravings of men who do not know
what the pleasures of lif e might be if they treated their
own capacities and the resources of nature reasonably
with the intention and expectation of being happy. 42

The business of a socialist party is not only to organize po
litical and economic change. It is, more vitally, to foster and
extend a real socialist consciousness, among working men,
so that finally

they understand themselves to be face to face with
false society, themselves the only possible elements of
true society. 43

We realize the tradition behind Morris even as, in this re
markable way, he gives a radically new application to its
ideas. For Morris is here announcing the extension of the
tradition into our own century, and setting the stage for its
continuing controversy.

PA.RX II

INTERREGNUM:

INTERREGNUM

THE pivotal figure of the tradition which has been exam
ined, and which we shall see continued and extended to
our own day, is William Morris. In the middle of the twen
tieth century Morris remains a contemporary thinker, for
the directions which he indicated have become part of a
general social movement. Yet he belongs, essentially, with
the great Victorian rebels, sharing with them an energy,
an expansion, a willingness to generalize which marks Mm,
from our own period of critical specialism, as an historic
figure. The life went out of that kind of general swearing
and homily soon after Morris's death, and we look at it now
post-mortem with mixed feelings of respect and suspicion.
It is almost true that there are no periods in thought; at
least, within a given form of society. But if there are, the
chances of reign and century deal hardly with them. The
temper which the adjective Victorian is useful to describe
is virtually finished in the i88os; the new men who appear
in that decade, and who have left their mark, are recogniz
ably different in tone. To the young Englishman in the
19208, this break was the emergence of the modem spirit,
and so we have tended to go on thinking. But now, from
the 19505, the bearings look different. The break comes no
longer in the generation of Butler, Shaw, Wilde, who are
already period figures. For us, our contemporaries, our
moods, appear in effect after the war of 19141918. D. H.
Lawrence is a contemporary, in mood, in a way that Butler
and Shaw are clearly not. As a result, we tend to look at
the period 1880-1914 as a Mud of interregnum- It is not
the period of the masters, of Coleridge or of George Eliot.
Nor yet is it the period of our contemporaries, of writers
who address themselves, in our kind of language, to the
common problems that we recognize. I shall then treat the
writers of that period who have affected our thinking about
culture, in a brief, separate section. If they were neglected
altogether, certain important links would be missing. Yet

174 CULTUBE AJSTO SOCIETY 1780-1950

we shall not find in them, except perhaps in Hulme, any
thing very new: a working-out, rather, of unfinished lines;
a tentative redirection. Such work requires notice, but sug
gests brevity.

i. W. H. Mallock

Mallock's The New Republic is as good a starting point
for this period as could be found: not so much as a fore
taste of what is to come but as a valediction to the period
we are leaving. The evident if fragile brilliance of The New
Republic has commanded for Mallock less readers than one
might reasonably expect. His later work, which gains in
substance as it loses in brilliance, has been almost wholly
neglected.

The plan of The New Republic, which was published in
1877 when Mallock was twenty-eight, is the bringing to
gether in a weekend house-party of a number of the figures
we have been discussing, together with the other masters
of Mallock's twenties. Matthew Arnold is there as Mr Luke,
RusJdn as Mr Herbert, Pater as Mr Rose, Jowett as Dr
Jenkinson, together with figures representing Herbert Spen
cer, W. K. Clifford, Violet Fane, and others who were more
important to Mallock than they can now be to us. Their
discussion of an ideal republic is made the occasion for a
number of very brilliant parodies; the book has about the
weight, in terms of ideas, of Aldous Huxley's early novels.
It is interesting to see the relative respect and disrespect
with which Mallock treats his figures: Pater, for instance,
is savaged in a way that Huxley has made familiar ('his
two topics are self-indulgence and art*); Arnold is little
more than a dandy and a bore; Ruskin, though shown as
theatrical, is still evidently respected. These are the uses of
the book as a document: the tradition seen at a certain
point in time through the eyes of an intelligent critic.

The second chapter of the third book is particularly use
ful. For example:

*You mean then,' said Miss Merton, 'that a man of
the highest culture is a sort of emotional bon mvant?

INTERREGNUM 175

'That surely is hardly a fair way* began Laurence.

'Excuse me, my dear Laurence/ broke in Mr Luke
in his most magnificent of manners, 'it is perfectly fair
it is admirably fair. Emotional bon vivantl* he ex
claimed. 'I thank Miss Merton for teaching me that
wordl for it may remind us all/ Mr Luke continued,
drawing out his words slowly, as if he liked the taste
of them, liow near our view of the matter is to that of
a certain Galilean peasant of whom Miss Merton has
perhaps heard who described the highest culture by
just the same metaphor, as a hunger and a thirst after
righteousness. Our notion of it differs only from his,
from the Zeitgeist having made it somewhat wider/ 1

The irony of 'just the same metaphor* retains its relevance
even if we wish to rescue Arnold from Mr Luke. The sub
sequent direction of the argument about culture is towards
Otho Laurence's (the host's) definition-
It is with the life about us that all our concern lies;
and culture's double end is simply this to make us
appreciate that life, and to make that life worth ap
preciating/ 2

and then its dilution into

'the aim of culture is to make us better company as
men and women of the world/ 3

It is on this weakened preoccupation that the wrath of Mr
Herbert's theatrical sermon descends:

'Will art, will painting, will poetry be any comfort to
you? You have said that these were magic mirrors
which reflected back your life for you. Well-will they
be any better than the glass mirrors in your drawing-
rooms, if they have nothing but the same listless orgy
to reflect? . . . What, then, shall you do to be saved?
Rend your hearts, 1 say, and do not mend your gar
ments. . . / 4

This is as far as the house-party gets, except for a discrimi
nating renewal of invitations.

1/6 CULTtmE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Mallock is not concerned, in The New Republic, to com
mit himself, but his later work shows him as perhaps the

most able conservative thinker of the last eighty years. The
mood of the later books is sceptical and critical, and Mal
lock is not to be recommended to socialists, or even demo
crats, who have merely received a doctrine and want to
keep it. The Limits of Pure Democracy (1917) anticipates,
and is better written than, those many books presenting a
similar thesis which have appeared since 1945. The politi
cal and economic arguments must be referred elsewhere,
but the result, in social thinking, is Mallock's dictum:

Only through oligarchy does civilized democracy know
itself.* 5

In the second chapter of Book VII, Mallock works this idea
out in terms of culture:

In each of the three lives that of knowledge, that of
aesthetic appreciation and that of religion on which
the quality of social intercourse in a civilized country
depends, the activities of the few play a part of such

supreme importance that were their activities ab
sent the mass of the citizens, whatever their material
wealth, would be unlettered, superstitious, and half-
brutal barbarians, as many newly enriched men on the
outskirts of civilization actually are today. 6

It is the truth of democratic theory that

whatever the few may add to the possible things of
civilization, the many must, according to their several
talents, share them. 7

But there will be nothing to share if the oligarchy (or mi
nority) is not recognized and maintained:

the many can prosper only through the participation
in benefits which, in the way alike of material comfort,
opportunity, culture and social freedom, would be pos
sible for no one unless the many submitted themselves
to the influence or authority of the supercapable few. 8

INTEBBJEGNUM 3.77

Two other points from The Limits of Pure Democracy
may be briefly noted: Mallock's discussion of the idea of
Equality of Opportunity, in terms of wages and of educa
tion. He says of the idea in general:

The demand for equality of opportunity may, indeed,
wear on the surface of it certain revolutionary aspects;
but it is in reality it is in its very nature a symptom
of moderation, or rather of an unintended conserva
tism, of which the masses of normal men cannot, if
they would, divest themselves. The very meaning of
the word 'opportunity* a word saturated as it is with
implications is enough in itself to show this. For if the
ideal demand of pure democracy were realized, and
the social conditions of all men made equal by force
of law, there would be no such thing as opportunity
equal or unequal, for anybody. . . . The desire for
equality of opportunity the desire for the right to rise
in so far as it is really experienced by the morally
typical man of all ages and nations, is a desire that
everybody (he himself, as included in 'everybody', be
ing a prominent figure in his thoughts) snail have an
opportunity of achieving by his own talents, if he can,
some position or condition which is not equal, but
which is, on the contrary, superior to any position or
condition which is achievable by the talents of all. 9

He then argues that, as applied to wage negotiations, the
advocates of equality of opportunity invariably in practice
seek, not absolute equality, but relative equality: that is to
say, wages graduated in proportion to effort, skill, length of
training, etc., with an insistence on the 'maintenance of their
proper graduation'. What is demanded (if Mallock's argu
ment may be paraphrased) is an equal opportunity to be
come unequal. It is so, also, he argues, in the advocacy of
popular education; what is emphasized is giving a chance
to gifted but poor children, so that they may better them
selves. The idea assumes

the existence of some average mass, whose capacities
and whose wages represent those normal lots, by their

178 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

upward distance from which those ampler lots are
measured, which opportunity offers to talents above
the average. 10

A large part of democratic sentiment, therefore, is in Mai-
lock's view merely a demand for the right to become a mem
ber of the oligarchy. But when this demand is, by the the
ory of pure democracy, granted to every member of society,
there can only be disillusion. Democratic theory is a senti
mental reassurance that the thing can be done; but the
facts of society, and of production in all its aspects, will de
mand major inequalities, corresponding to differences of ef
fort and ability, and these will be assessed on a basis of
fact rather than on that self -estimate which democratic the
ory, in its encouragement of everyone, seems to support
The 'masses* can only, in following this path, be deluded
or disillusioned. It is better, then, to recognize that the gen
eral welfare depends on exceptional ability and effort, which
have to be stimulated and maintained, and to recognize,
in consequence, that oligarchy is not the opposite of de
mocracy, but its necessary complement.

The confusion between government and social contribu
tion, in this argument, is comparatively easy to spot. But
the 'aristocracy of talent', which Carlyle had first defined,
was a popular notion in this period, as may be seen in Shaw
and Wells. We can see now its inevitable confusion with
arbitrary inequalities, and we limit Mallock accordingly.
Yet the democratic idea needed its sceptics, and Mallock,
always, is shrewd enough to be attended to.

n. The 'New Aesthetics'

If the 'eighties and 'nineties in England had really pro
duced a new aesthetics, it might have stood greatly to their
credit. But what was called, from Pater in the late 'sixties,
the new doctrine of 'art for art's sake', was really little more
than a restatement of an attitude which properly belongs
to the first generations of the Romantics. The most extreme
form of this restatement is to be found in Whistler, but in
Pater and Wilde, who have been associated with Whistler's

INTERREGNUM l^g

position, the continuity from the earlier tradition is quite
evident. We need trace only the point at which this kind
of reaffirmation swung over, in certain extreme statements,
to something approaching its negation.

What we sometimes suppose to be a change in ideas is
perhaps properly identified as a change-a change for the
worse-in prose. This is particularly evident in the case of
Pater, whose ideas, when visible through the gauze, are the
ideas of Wordsworth, of Shelley and of Arnold. The con
clusion of the essay on Wordsworth is the obvious illustra
tion of this. Pater writes:

That the end of life is not action but contemplation
being as distinct from doing & certain disposition of
the mind; is, in some shape or other, the principle of
all the higher morality. In poetry, in art, if you enter
into their true spirit at all, you touch this principle,
in a measure: these, by their very sterility, are a type
of beholding for the mere joy of beholding. To treat
life in the spirit of art, is to make life a thing in which
means and ends are identified: to encourage such treat
ment, the true moral significance of art and poetry.
. . . Not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, or even
to stimulate us to noble ends; but to withdraw the
thoughts for a little while from the mere machinery
of life, to fix them, with appropriate emotions, on the
spectacle of those great facts in man's existence which
no machinery affects. ... To witness this spectacle
with appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture. 1

The elements of continuity in this statement are clear: the
distinction between T>eing* and 'doingf , tie criticism of 'mere
machinery', the description of this 'true moral significance
of art and poetry* as 'culture* tihds to the very words is no
more than a summing-up of the long preceding tradition.
And it is doubtful whether Pater believed that he was say
ing anything different when he wrote the notorious sentence
in the Conclusion (1868) to The Renaissance;

Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of
beauty, the love of art for art's sake, has most; for art

l8o CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but
the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and
simply for those moments' sake. 2

For Pater is here saying no more than Mill said when he
described poetry as 'a culture of the feelings'. If we dis
approve the attitude in Pater, we must similarly disapprove
it in MillI suggested, in my discussion of Mill, its inade
quacy. Yet Mill is approvingly quoted, while Pater is com
monly dismissed in a cloud of roses and stars. The composi
tion of this curious cloud is indeed the whole point. It is
not Pater's doctrine that is commonly rejected; indeed, an
austere technician like I. A. Richards seems, in the ques
tion of doctrine, to be very close to Pater, yet the reaction
is quite different. What we reject in Pater is his instances,
and|he substance of these instances is his style at its worst.
It has been to us, we say, but as the sound of lyres and
flutes; and when we repeat these words, we do not hear any
particular instruments. To recommend the saving power of
sensibility is, always, to invite attention to one's instances,
even if these He only in the language of the recommenda
tion. Pater, as a teacher, is enrolled in the Grand Old Cause,
and the rejection of his teaching implies, properly, a rejec
tion of the whole Romantic position from Keats to Arnold.
The first emphasis of culture was an emphasis of the func
tion of certain kinds of thought and feeling in the whole
life of man: a function properly described as moral. Pater
argues this function within the major tradition; in his gen
eral statements he is at one with his peers. Yet repeatedly,
in his instances, he embodies the negative element which
is always latent in this position: the reduction of a whole
process, characterized by its movement and its interactions,
to a fragmentary, isolated product Pater's image of the
contemplating being, who has struggled 'with those forms
till its secret is won from each, and then lets each fall back
into its place, in the supreme, artistic view of life'. 3 His
apotheosis of La Gioconda is typical of this image, but his
relation to art is such that he seems genuinely unable to
distinguish between the condition of a work of art a made
thing, containing within itself an achieved stillness and the

INTEBBEGNUM l8l

condition of any life, which is not made but making, and

which can only in phantasy be detached from a continuous
process and a whole condition. Pater's kind of sensibility
thus reduces a general and active proposition to what is,
in effect, its negation. Art for art's sake is a reasonable
maxim for the artist, when creating, and for the spectator
when the work is being communicated; at such times, it is
no more than a definition of attention. The negative ele
ment is the phantasyusually explicable that a man can
himself become, can confuse himself with, a made work.
The phantasy is common enough for Pater to be compre
hended; it is indeed a general distortion of the emphasis
on culture, which otherwise Pater clearly continues and
conveys.

Whistler is Pater vulgarized, yet the vulgarity is in a
way a gain. Unlike Pater, he rejects the received thesis, in
particular the thesis of Ruskin. In opposition to the belief
that in the past, and especially in the Middle Ages, there
was a greater general regard for art and a fuller integration
of it with the common life, Whistler asserted:

Listen! There never was an artistic period. There never
was an art-loving nation. ... If Art be rare today, it
was seldom heretofore. It is false, this teaching of de
cay. . . . False again, the fabled link between the
grandeur of Art and the glories and virtues of the State,
for Art feeds not upon nations, and peoples may be
wiped from the face of the earth, but Art is. 4

This is only Pater's practical separation of art and Me (a
separation resting on their confusion, and on the consequent
reduction of life to the condition of art) extended and
jumped up into a kind of theory, which is then entirely
opposed to the tradition which Pater in his general state
ments had continued, listen!* says Whistler, and we have
listened. We agree that *this teaching of decay' is at any rate
partly false; we agree also with his onslaught on 'Taste':

Taste' has long been confounded with capacity, and
accepted as sufficient qualification for the utterance of
judgment. . . . Art is joyously received as a matter of

l82 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

opinion; and that it should be based upon laws as rigid
and defined as those of the . . . sciences, is a supposi
tion no longer to be tolerated by modern cultivation.
. . . The millennium of Taste sets in. 5

It is no more than Wordsworth was saying, eighty years

earlier, but it is relevant, as is the observation

Art is upon the Town! ... to be coaxed into com
pany, as a proof of culture and refinement. 6

These are reasonable criticisms of a fashionable ethos, but
Whistler is at once too shallow and too confused to make
anything further of them. For example, a statement like the
following is useful:

Humanity takes the place of Art, and God's creations
are excused by their usefulness. Beauty is confounded
with virtue, and, before a work of art, it is asked:
'What good shall it do?' 7

Newman had drawn attention to a similar confusion be
tween *beauty' and virtue, and to the deficiencies of 'Taste*,
but what we have now to notice in Whistler is an accept
ance of the simple converse: art takes the place of human
ity, and virtue is not merely distinguished from beauty, but
made irrelevant. There are times, in reading Pater, when
one sees how this position was prepared, and it is in Pater's
accents that Whistler makes his only positive point:

We have then but to wait until with the mark of the
gods upon him there come among us again the chosen
who shall continue what has gone before. Satisfied
that, even were he never to appear, the story of the
beautiful is already complete hewn in the marbles of
the Parthenon and broidered, with the birds, upon
the fan of Hokusai at the foot of Fusi-Yama. 8

The accents of this cannot disguise its servility: an essential
servility which made possible Whistler's spurts of arrogance.
This degree of abstraction of Art and 'the beautiful', this
reduction of man to the status of a humble spectator, com
pose together a lifeless caricature yet bearing a carica-

INTERREGNUM 183

tare's relations to its original of the positive affirmations of
Shelley or of Keats. In Whistler, the Romantic trap has
been sprung.

Oscar Wilde, by comparison, is a traditional Igure. His
immediate reply to Whistler's account of the artist is the
sober (if in vocabulary self-conscious)

an artist is not an isolated fact, he is the resultant of a
certain milieu and a certain entourage. 9

In The Soul of Man under Socialism, he repeats a familiar
point from Arnold and Pater:

The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has,
but in what man is. 10

The right activity of man, he argues elsewhere, is

not doing, but being, and not being merely, but be
coming. 11

The 'true ideal' of man is 'self-culture'; and culture is made

possible by a 'transmission of racial experience', which 'the
critical spirit alone . . . (makes) perfect'. 12

The 'new aesthetics', as expounded by Wilde, had three
principles: first, that 'art never expresses anything but it
self; second, that 'all bad art comes from returning to Life
and Nature, and elevating them into ideals'; third, that 'Life
imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life'. 13 In conse
quence, Wilde finds,

all art is immoral . . .for emotion for the sate of emo
tion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of ac
tion is the aim of life, and of that practical organiza
tion of life that we call society. Society, which is the
beginning and basis of morals, exists simply for the
concentration of human energy. . . . Society often for
gives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer. . . .
While in the opinion of society, Contemplation is the
gravest sin of which any citizen can be guilty, in the
opinion of the highest culture it is the proper occupa
tion of man. 14

184 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Wilde stands in this with Pater and Arnold, but Ms atti
tudes to society are, though consistent with this, unex
pected. For example:

Civilization requires slaves. . . . Unless there are
slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, cul
ture and contemplation become almost impossible.
Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing.
On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine,
the future of the world depends. ... At present ma
chinery competes against man. Under proper condi
tions machinery will serve man. . . . The machines
will be the new slaves. 15

This is a good example of the Wildean paradox, no longer

merely verbal, but embodying a real adjustment and ad
vance in feeling. The same may be said of his claims for

socialism:

The chief advantage that would result from the es
tablishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that
Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity
of living for others which, in the present condition of
things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. 16

This might appear modish, but it is based on a real per
ception:

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is ask
ing others to live as one wishes to live. 17

In its context, this is a valuable criticism of a dominative
mood which is characteristic alike of Arnold's Philistines
and of some of their socialist opponents. In turning the
phrases of didactic respectability, Wilde often reached a
feeling that is in fact more generally humane:

The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and
are much to be regretted. . . . The best amongst the
poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discon
tented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite
right to be so. 18

INTEBBEGNTJM l8$

Art is not an argument against social change, but its cor
ollary:

Socialism will . . . restore society to its proper condi
tion of a thoroughly healthy organism, and ensure the
material well-being of each member of the commu
nity. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its
proper environment. But for the full development of
Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more
is needed. What is needed is Individualism. 19

Art, as 'the most intense form of individualism that the
world has known*, is an epitome of the life that social
change will make generally possible. But it is not merely to
be contrasted with 'materialism';

Men . . . rage against Materialism, as they call it, for
getting that there has been no material improvement
that has not spiritualized the world. 20

Thus, while the 'new aesthetics* rests essentially on a denial
of society, and Wilde in the end is no exception, yet, in
Wilde, the pursuit of an isolated aesthetic pleasure is ac
companied by a general humanity which is a real ground
for respect. If he remains the fastidious spectator of a com
mon life, he is yet intelligent enough to realize that the
basis of cultivated individual living will have to be redrawn
on less degrading general terms. He, rather than Pater, is
the first of the minor inheritors of Arnold, whose general
position he repeats, without the Victorian ballast which is
Arnold's moral stability, but with much the same irony
that of the desperate, chiding spectator narrowed and
hardened to a sharper and more conscious wit. In being
the prodigal of a most respectable tradition, Wilde showed,
perhaps, what the tradition had still to learn.

m. George Gissing

If the difficulty of obtaining recent editions of his work
is any guide, Gissing is now generally neglected, although
he holds his place in the text-books. Yet if The Way of M
Flesh, Tono Bungay, or The Man of Property can still be

l86 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

usefully read, so, without question, can Gissing's Neto Grub
Street or The Nether World. The interest of Gissing in the
present context lies in two aspects of his work: his analysis
of literature as a trade, which makes New Grub Street a
minor classic; and his social observations and attitudes, in
such novels as The Nether World and Demos, which pro
vide evidence of a significant and continuing process. The
interest of the first point is enhanced by its date: Gissing
wrote New Grub Street in 1891, at the crucial time for an
observation of the effects on literature of the new journal
ism and the new kind of market. These effects are drama
tized in the novel in the contrast between the novelist Rear-
don, who fails and dies, and Jasper Milvain, the 'new* kind
of writer. Milvain's exposition is characteristic:

'Just understand the difference between a man like
Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of un
practical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He
won't make concessions, or, rather, he can't make
them; he can't supply the market. . . . Literature
nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who
may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful
man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first
and foremost of the markets; when one land of goods
begins to go off slacldy, he is ready with something
new and appetizing. He knows perfectly all the pos
sible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell he'll
get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters.
. . . Reardon can't do that kind of thing; he's behind
his age; lie sells a manuscript as if he lived in Sam
Johnson's Grub Street. But our Grub Street of today is
quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic
communication, it knows what literary fare is in de
mand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are
men of business, however seedy/ 1

A now familiar case has hardly ever been better put. And
Gissing sees to it that these observations by Milvain, at the
outset of his career, are amply justified by the action. At
the end of the book, Milvain lies back 'in dreamy bliss*,
married to Reardon's widow, editor of The Current, and

INTEKKEGNtTM 187

having written a respectful notice of The Novels of Edwin
Reardon*.

If Milvain is one portent, the entrepreneur Whelpdale is
another. Having played with the idea of 'Novel-writing
taught in ten lessons', he finds his true destiny in 'one of the
most notable projects of modem times':

"Let me explain my principle. I would have the paper
address itself to the quarter-educated; that is to say,
the great new generation that is being turned out by
the Board schools, the young men and women who
can just read, but are incapable of sustained attention.
People of this kind want something to occupy them
in trains and on Abuses and trams. As a rule they care
for no newspapers except the Sunday ones; what they
want is the lightest and frothiest of chit-chatty infor
mationbits of stories, bits of description, bits of scan
dal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery. . . .
No article in the paper is to measure more than two
inches in length, and every inch must be broken into
at least two paragraphs.* 2

The project materializes; the periodical Chat is renamed
Chit-Chat, and so transformed that

in a month's time all England was ringing with the
fame of this noble new development of journalism. 3

Gissing is writing, of course, after Tit-Bits, if only by a few
years, but his estimate of attitudes, which are less easily
recorded than methods, is at once interesting and convinc
ing. The exploration of detail at the various levels of New
Grub Street, which reaches as far as the Reading Room
of the British Museum, carries a general conviction. The
book is not likely to be read by any kind of writer, now,
without a number of wry recognitions. And it is so repre
sentative and so thorough that it is extraordinary that it
should not be more generally read.

The figure of Reardon, and in a lesser degree that of
Harold Biffen, author of the realistic novel Mr Bailey,
Grocer, are evidently, within the limits of such correspond
ences, related to Gissing himself. The achievement of a de-

l88 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

gree of irony towards Biffen, as part of the relatively ma
ture general tone of the novel, marks indeed an important
stage in Gissing's development. His novels after 1891 (he
had remarried in 1890) are perhaps better, hut in many
ways less interesting, than his work in the 'eighties, as a
very young man, when the pressure on him was at its most
severe. Demos (1886) and The Nether World (1889) are
not great or even very good novels; but they have con
siderable interest from the fact that they stand in the direct
line of succession from the 'industrial novels' of the 18403.
It is interesting to see what has happened to the structure
of feeling there indicated with the passing of forty years.
One's first reaction is that the essential structure has not
changed at all. If Gissing is less compassionately observant
than Mrs Gaskell, less overtly polemical than Kingsley, still
The Nether World and Demos would be sympathetically
endorsed by either of them, or by their typical readers. Yet
Gissing does introduce an important new element, and one
that remains significant. He has often been called *the
spokesman of despair', and this is true in both meanings of
the phrase. Like Kingsley and Mrs Gaskell, he writes to
describe the true conditions of the poor, and to protest

against those brute forces of society which fill with
wreck the abysses of the nether world. 4

Yet he is also the spokesman of another kind of despair: the
despair born of social and political disillusion. In this he is
a figure exactly like Orwell in our own day, and for much
the same reasons. Whether one calls this honesty or not
will depend on experience.

The Nether World, though marked by this latter ele
ment, is primarily a simple descriptive novel centred on two
characters, Sidney Korkwood and Jane Snowdon, who are
part of the ideal mode of earlier novels of this type:

In each life little for congratulation. He with the am
bitions of his youth frustrated; neither an artist, nor
a leader of men in the battle for justice. She, no saviour
of society by the force of a superb example; no daugh
ter of the people, holding wealth in trust for the

INTERREGISrUM l8g

people's needs. Yet to both was their work given. Un
marked, unencouraged save by their love of upright
ness and mercy, they stood by the side of those more
hapless, brought some comfort to hearts less coura
geous than their own. Where they abode it was not all
dark. 5

This is, of course, a Victorian solution; a dedication to char
ity, shrunk to an almost hidden scale, within an essential
resignation.

In Workers in the Dawn (1880) Gissing had been an
evident radical, but the sentimentality of the title indicates
the precariousness of the attachment. He came to be dis
illusioned, but the process of this, as one follows it in the
novels, is less a discovery of reality than a document of a
particular category of feeling, which we can call 'negative
identification'. Gissing himself puts the best description of
this into the mouth of one of the predecessors of Reardon,
in the novel The Unclassed (1884) :

1 often amuse myself with taking to pieces my former
self. I was not a conscious hypocrite in those days of
violent radicalism, working-manVclub lecturing, and
the like; the fault was that I understood myself as yet
so imperfectly. That zeal on behalf of the suffering
masses was nothing more nor less than disguised zeal
on behalf of my own starved passions. I was poor and
desperate, life had no pleasures, the future seemed
hopeless, yet I was overflowing with vehement desires,
every nerve in me was a hunger which cried to be ap
peased. ... I identified myself with the poor and ig
norant; I did not make their cause my own, but my
own cause theirs.' 6

This is the negative identification which has been responsi
ble for a great deal of adolescent socialism and radicalism,
in particular in the adolescent who is breaking away from
(or, as in Gissing's personal history, has fallen foul of) the
social standards of his own class. The rebel (or, as in Gis
sing, the outcast he was sent down from his college at
Manchester on an issue of personal conduct) finds availa-

1QO CTILTUBE AND SOCIETY

ble to brm an apparent cause, on behalf of the outcast of
society, in a mood of rebellion. He identifies himself with
this, often passionately. But the identification will involve
an actual relationship, and, at this stage, the rebel faces
his new crisis. It is not only that he will normally be re
luctant to accept the discipline of the cause; it is also, and
more essentially, that the outcast class, whom he has
thought of as noble (outcast = himself = noble) are in
fact nothing of the kind, but are very mixed in character,
containing very good and very bad, and in any case living
in ways that differ from his own. I do not say that it is
not then possible for him to go on; there have been some
useful rebels who began in this way. But clearly in the or
dinary case there will be disillusion. The cause will not be
precisely his cause; the oppressed will have intentions and
attachments and faults of their own. The rebel will react
within his own terms: either violently these people are a
menace 'the brute domination of the quarter-educated
mob'; or soberly these people cannot be helped reform is
useless, we need a deep, underlying change. Or else (as
has happened in our own generation, with a transfer of
identification from the working masses, as in the 'thirties, to
the oppressed colonial populations, as now) he will find a
new cause. I do not seek to minimize the difficulties of such
men, but I would insist that their accounts of their progress
form documents, not of a discovered reality, but of their
own emotional pressures and recoils. Gissing found the
London poor repulsive, in the mass; his descriptions have
all the generalizing squalor of a Dickens or an Orwell. There
are two points here. First, it does not come as news to any
one bom into a poor family that the poor are not beautiful,
or that a number of them are lying, shiftless and their own
worst enemies. Within an actual social experience, these
things can be accepted and recognized; we are dealing
after all with actual people under severe pressure. A man
like Gorki can record the faults of the poor (in his Auto
biography and elsewhere) with an unfailing and quite un
sentimental alertness. But a Gorki would not suppose that
this was an argument against change, or a reason for dis
satisfaction with the popular cause. He was never subject

INTEBREGNUM IQl

to that kind of illusion because that was not the material
of Ms attachment, which grew within a whole reality. Sec
ond, the faults of the poor, as they are seen from within a
whole situation, are different more individualized, and re
lated to different standards from those seen by the rebel
whose identification is merely negative. Gissing sees real
faults, but generalizes them his use of an abstract figure
like Demos makes this process clear. He sees also what to
him are faults, but what, objectively, are no more than dif
ferences. A good local example of this occurs in Dewos,
where the shiftless 'Any speaks, and receives Gissing's
comment;

*A clerk's, of course.'

He pronounced the word 'clerk' as it is spelt; it made
him seem yet more ignoble. 7

This example is to be recommended to Mr Russell Kirk, a
modern American conservative who, describing Gissing as
a 'proletarian novelist', finds in Gissing's discovery of the
ignobility of the poor a Conservative witness. 8 What Gis
sing is here discovering, of course and an American is well
placed to appreciate it is a trivial difference of speech
habit which only his own ambiguous emotion permits him
to interpret as Ignoble'. There is a good deal of this in Gis
sing. There is some wonderful nonsense, also in Demos, 9
about the final distinction between a lady and an upstart
being the way she closes her lips. Absurd local examples
can be confirmed in Gissing's whole treatment. The general
compassion is tempered by a different emotion: the desire
of the outcast from another class, who in material circum
stances is not to be distinguished from the amorphous ig
noble poor, to emphasize all the differences that are pos
sible, and to insist that they are real and important the
attitude to working-class speech (a thing in itself not at all
uniform) is characteristic of this. Anyone now in Gissing's
position, or in one resembling it, can gain from a critical
reading of these social novels, in their exposure of a num
ber of prejudices and false positions, towards which this
situation by its own pressures urges them.
It is better that a man like Gissing should write Demos

iga CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

or The Nether World than that lie should write Workers
in the Dawn. Nothing is to be gained from a simple nega
tive identification, as in the latter, whereas its breakdown
can be instructive. And it is breakdown that we must stress.
We do not learn from Demos that social reform is hopeless;
we learn about Gissing's prejudices and difficulties. The
case he sets himself to prove is instructive: that a socialist
working man, Richard Mutimer, on inheriting a fortune by
what amounts to an accident, will inevitably deteriorate
personaEy, and will end by diluting his principles. This does
not surprise me, but it is interesting that Gissing thought
this an analogue of social reform the book is sub-titled A
Story of English Socialism. Mutimer's destiny is always
predictable, down to the point where, poor again, and seek
ing only to serve the working people, he is, in part through
his own carelessness, in part through real error, stoned to
death by those whom he sought to help. We do not need
to ask whose martyrdom this is, and in terms of the struc
ture of feeling we return it to Felix Holt: if you get in
volved, you get into trouble.

There remains, finally, a more general line to be drawn.
After New Grub Street f Gissing returns to his proper study,
that of the condition of exile and loneliness; but both before
and after the change there is a significant pattern: the dis
illusion with social reform is transmuted to an attachment
to art. It is so in Waymark, who had described the nega
tive identification in The Unclassed. It is so in Demos,
where it is embodied in the figure of Stella, the wife of a
literary socialist', Westlake, who has points of relation to
William Morris (*the man who wrote "Daphne"!* 10 ). The
description in this latter instance will serve generally:

there is a work in the cause of humanity other than
that which goes on so clamorously in lecture-halls and
at street-corners . . . the work of those whose soul is
taken captive of loveliness, who pursue the spiritual
ideal apart from the world's tumult. 11

The relation of this to the 'new aesthetics' is clear enough,
and Westlake if he had really been Morris would have had
something relevant to say about it. But the attachment, ex-

INTERREGNUM 193

cept in its resting on a false, because partial, antithesis, is
certainly to be respected. In its extension for it is now 'the
world's tumult* is mediated that is always crucial Gissing
reverts to an early strand in the development of the idea
of culture: to rural values, the old order uncorrupted by
commercialism, the distrust of industry and science (the
latter 'the remorseless enemy of manMnd'). Hubert El-
don, the squire, saves the beautiful Wanley valley from
the coarse, industry-spreading Socialist, Richard Mutimer.
Within this old order, guaranteed by the Englishman's love
of 'Common Sense . . . that Uncommon Sense*, and Ms dis
trust of abstractions, virtue can reside. It is a matter of
opinion, I suppose, whether one finds this a convincing
peroration, or, in the world's tumult, the desperate ration
alization of a deeply sensitive, deeply lonely man.

iv. Shaw and Fabianism

'Do I at last see before me that old and tried friend
of the working classes, George Bernard Shaw? How
are you, George?'

... I was not then old, and had no other feeling for
the working classes than an intense desire to abolish
them and replace them by sensible people. 1

This is the right way, with Gissing still in mind, to approach
the social thinking of Shaw. It is a point which he often
makes:

When the Socialist movement in London took its tone
from lovers of art and literature ... it was apt to as
sume that all that was needed was to teach Socialism
to the masses (vaguely imagined as a huge crowd of
tramplike saints) and leave the rest to the natural ef
fect of sowing the good seed in kindly virgin soil. But
the proletarian soil was neither virgin nor exceptionally
kindly. . . . The blunt truth is that 11 used people are
worse than well used people: indeed this is at bottom
the only good reason why we should not allow anyone
to be ifl used. . . . We should refuse to tolerate pov
erty as a social institution not because the poor are the

1Q4 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

salt of the earth, but because 'the poor in a lump are
bad 1 . 2

Such negative criticism is useful (it is the point made in
Tiirgeniev's Virgin Soil) , but Shaw's conviction of the es
sential badness of the poor is very close to Gissing (com
pare Pygmalion with Gissing's 'Any). It exists, however,
within a sttE deeper feeling, which is fundamental to Shaw:

We have to confess it: Capitalist mankind in the lump
is detestable, . . . Both rich and poor are really hate
ful in themselves. For my part I hate the poor and
look forward eagerly to their extermination. I pity the
rich a little, but am equally bent on their extermina
tion. The working classes, the business cksses, the pro
fessional classes, the propertied classes, the ruling
classes, are each more odious than the other; they
have no right to live: I should despair if I did not
know that they will all die presently, and that there is
no need on earth why they should be replaced by peo
ple like themselves. . . . And yet I am not in the least
a misanthrope. I am a person of normal affections. 3

If we look at this sentiment, soberly, we shall probably rec
ognize it as one of the perennial sources of politics. The
description of available mankind as 'capitalist mankind' is
so plausible a gambit, to be followed by adherence to a
system, and prophecy of a new kind of man, that what in
its direct terms might not be easily confessed is soon ra
tionalized as a humanitarian concern. It is not that one
doubts Shaw's kindliness, his 'normal affections', but that
one sees these, quite clearly, as pre-social affections: attach
ments that can hardly be mediated in any adult world. The
choice of the word 'extermination* is hardly an accident;
it betrays the dissociated violence of the feeling, which is
still compatible with private kindliness. 'Yahoo' is perhaps
never shouted but by sensitive, kindly, lonely men.

As a basis for Shaw's politics, the feeling is rational. The
hatefolness of men, his period had taught him to believe,
is not final; it is merely the stamp of their incomplete evolu
tion. The agency of this evolution is still, however, in ques-

INTERREGNUM 195

tion. The socialism which promises regeneration by the
coming to power of the working class will obviously not be
acceptable: the odious can hardly negotiate the noble. In
one way or another, regeneration is something that will
have to be done for mankind; but then by whom? Marxist
revolution is merely an old-fashioned liberal romanticism.
Owenite revolution, the belief that man will accept the new
moral world as soon as he is clearly told about it, is also
incredible. Yet, despite the facts of human continuity, the
odious need not at all T>e replaced by people like them
selves'. A revolutionary discontinuity has to be achieved in
the context of a disbelief in revolutions. In the end, Shaw
never got out of this dilemma, but for a time, and especially
in the 'eighties and 'nineties, he went along with a particular
English tradition, which culminated in Fabianism. If the
existing classes were odious, there was always, in Arnold's
term, the 'remnant': men moved by general feelings of hu
manity. If the appeals of Carlyle and Buskin for the aris
tocracy to resume its functions had failed, there was always
the other aristocracy, the aristocracy of intellect. Shaw, de
termined on socialism, chose these means of its attainment.
Shaw's association with Fabianism is of great impor
tance, for it marks the confluence of two traditions which
had been formerly separate and even opposed. Fabianism,
in the orthodox person of Sidney Webb, is the direct in
heritor of the spirit of John Stuart Mill; that is to say, of a
utilitarianism refined by experience of a new situation in
history. Shaw, on the other hand, is the direct successor of
the spirit of Carlyle and of Ruskin, but he did not go the
way of his elder successor, William Morris. In attaching
himself to Fabianism, Shaw was, in effect, telling Carlyle
and Ruskin to go to school with Bentham, telling Arnold
to get together with Mill. One sees, even as early as Fabian
Essays (1889), his doubts of this, when, having sketched
a policy of gradual reform, he writes:

Let me, In conclusion, disavow all admiration for this
inevitable, but sordid, slow, reluctant, cowardly path
to justice. I venture to claim your respect for those en
thusiasts who still refuse to believe that millions of

ig6 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

their f elow creatures must be left to sweat and suffer
In hopeless toil and degradation, whilst parliaments
and vestries grudgingly muddle and grope towards
paltry instalments of betterment. The right is so clear,
the wrong so intolerable, the gospel so convincing, that
it seems to them that it must be possible to enlist the
whole body of workers soldiers, policemen, and aE
under the banner of brotherhood and equality; and at
one great stroke to set Justice on her rightful throne.
Unfortunately, such an army of light is no more to be
gathered from the human product of nineteenth-
century civilization than grapes are to be gathered
from thistles. But if we feel glad of that impossibility
... if we feel anything less than acute disappoint
ment and bitter humiliation at the discovery . . . then
I submit to you that our institutions have corrupted us
to the most dastardly degree of selfishness. 4

This is Shaw at his best, but the feeling he describes is not
a feeling that would have occurred to the normal Fabian.
Certainly, Sidney Webb gives one no such impression. To
Webb, socialism was the straightforward business of evo
lution:

Historic fossils are more dangerous . . . but against

the stream of tendencies they are ultimately powerless.
. . . The main stream which has borne European soci
ety towards Socialism during the past 100 years is the
irresistible progress of Democracy. . . .The economic
side of the democratic ideal is, in fact, Socialism itself.
. . . The landlord and the capitalist are both, finding
that the steam-engine is a Frankenstein which they
had better not have raised; for with it conies inevitably
urban Democracy, the study of Political Economy, and
Socialism. 5

On this, with its calm, admirable assumption of steady
progress, William Morris's comment may be recalled: the
Fabians, he said,

very much underrate the strength of the tremendous
organization under which we live. . . . Nothing but

INTERREGNUM 197

a tremendous force can deal with this force; it will not
suffer itself to be dismembered, nor to lose anything
which really is its essence without putting forth all its
force in resistance; rather than lose anything which it

considers of importance, it will pull the roof of the
world down upon its head. 6

(Webb, oddly, had also been thinking about Samson, but
in different terms: 'the industrial revolution has left the la
borer a landless stranger in his own country. The political
evolution is rapidly making him its ruler. Samson is feeling
for his grip on the pillars/ 7 There is some significance in the
different application of the metaphor.)

Of Webb's evolutionary argument, with its formidable
list of public administrative arrangements already in force,
Morris added:

He is so anxious to prove the commonplace that our

present industrial system embraces some of the ma
chinery by means of which a Socialist system might
be worked . . . that his paper tends to produce the
impression of one who thinks that we are already in
the first stages of socialistic Me. 8

Webb's mistake, for Morris, was to

overestimate the importance of the mechanism of a
system of society apart from the end towards which it

may be used. 9

These are the precise terms in which, from Carlyle to Ar
nold, the utilitarians had always been criticized.

The argument between Morris and Webb, "between
communism and social democracy, still rages; neither has
yet been proved finally right. But it is significant to take tibe
argument thirty or forty years on from Fabian Essays, and
to compare Webb's Introduction to the 1920 edition with
Shaw's Preface to that of 1931. Webb, in 1920, is admira
bly himself: the intervening lines are traced and annotated;
the questions formerly neglected are lucidly posed and dis
cussed:

We evidently attached quite insufficient importance to

ig8 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

Trade Unionism. . . . We were similarly unapprecia-
tive of the Cooperative Movement. . . . We went far
astray in what was said about Unemployment. . . .
And whilst we were strong on Liberty and Fraternity
... we were apt to forget Equality. 10

These defects, however, have been remedied: the reader is
referred to the relevant works.

Shaw's Preface is wholly different in tone. He refers to
Morris as 'the greatest Socialist of that day', and, on the
central issue of the Fabian adherence to constitutional
change, which Morris had opposed, adds:

It is not so certain today as it seemed in the 'eighties
that Morris was not right 11

Shaw had, of course, lived to see Fascism, which could not
be blandly overlooked as a fossil. He had also, however,
lived through the essential disillusion which haunts his
statements of the 'eighties. Socialism might be for Mill or
Webb the 'economic obverse' of democracy, but was the
faith In democracy real?

The naked truth is that democracy, or government
by the people through votes for everybody, has never
been a complete reality; and to the very limited extent
to which it has been a reality it has not been a success.
The extravagant hopes which have been attached to
every extension of it have been disappointed. ... If
there were any disfranchised class left for our demo
crats to pin their repeatedly disappointed hopes on,
no doubt they would still clamour for a fresh set of
votes to jump the last ditch into their Utopia; and the
vogue of democracy might last a while yet. Possibly
there may be here and there lunatics looking forward
to votes for children, or for animals, to complete the
democratic structure. But the majority shows signs of
having had enough of it. 12

Capitalism, he argues, has produced such ignorance, par
ticularly as a result of the division of labour, that

INTERREGNUM igg

we should die of idiocy through disuse of our mental
faculties if we did not fill our heads with romantic non
sense out of illustrated newspapers and novels and
plays and films. Such stuff keeps us alive; but it falsi
fies everything for us so absurdly that it leaves us more
or less dangerous lunatics in the real world. 13

In consequence,

the more power the people are given the more urgent
becomes the need for some rational and well-informed
superpower to dominate them and disable their in
veterate admiration of international murder and na
tional suicide. 14

Here the wheel has come full circle, and Shaw is back with
Carlyle. We have to set 'dominate . . . and disable* with
'exterminate' as significant marks of feeling, but Shaw re
mains to be listened to. In the mood that brought him to
Fabianism, he goes on with proposals for a real elective
aristocracy, which should inaugurate socialism and equal
ity. In the mood of his earlier disillusion, he concludes:

Since all moral triumphs, like mechanical triumphs,
are reached by trial and error, we can despair of De
mocracy and despair of Capitalism without despairing
of human nature: indeed if we did not despair of them
as we know them we should prove ourselves so worth
less that there would be nothing left for the world but
to wait for the creation of a new race of beings capa
ble of succeeding where we have failed, 15

This is the ironic twist of the Fabian adherence to evolu
tion as a social model: that it comes, in Shaw, to an evolu
tion of humanity beyond man. The twist, perhaps, was al
ways there, in the deeply humane man who hated what he
called 'capitalist mankind*. The situation has, in modern so
cial thinking, a representative significance, and Shaw is al
ways so articulate and so penetrating that he remains a
classical point to which we are bound, in wisdom, to refer.

00 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

v. Critics of the State

la terms of industrial action, the Labour movement has
gone its own way: at times, indeed, to the point where a
Fabian might conclude that it was feeling for its grip on the
pillars. But the political actions of the Labour movement as
a recognizable body have, in general, been under Fabian
direction; we now live, in certain evident respects, in a
Webb world. The identification of socialism with State ac
tion is the clear result of this, and the identification points
a further argument, within the tradition which we are con
sidering. Hilaire Belloc wrote The Servile State, and with
Chesterton continued a mediaevalist sentiment that we have
already traced to this point. The conclusions of this type
of criticism have led down to a number of books in our own
time, with Hayek's The Road to Serfdom as exemplar. Also,
however, within the interregnum, there was an important
body of socialist criticism of the State, in the Guild Socialist
movement inaugurated by Penty, Orage and Hobson, and
later continued by Cole. These currents of opinion are the
direct inheritors of elements of the nineteenth-century tra
dition.

Belloc's argument is that capitalism as a system is break
ing down, and that this is to be welcomed. A society in
which a minority owns and controls the means of produc
tion, while the majority are reduced to proletarian status, is
not only wrong but unstable. Belloc sees it breaking down
in two ways on the one hand into State action for welfare
(which pure capitalism cannot embody) ; on the other hand
into monopoly and the restraint of trade. There are only two
alternatives to this system: socialism, which Belloc calls col
lectivism; and the redistribution of property on a significant
scale, which Belloc calls distributivism. Our social difficul
ties will not be understood if they are regarded as the prod
uct of the Industrial Revolution: modern society was not
formed by the growth of industry, but by the fact that

capitalism was here in England before the Industrial
System. . . . England, the seed-plot of the Industrial

INTERREGNUM 201

System, was already captured by a wealthy oligarchy
before the series of great discoveries began. 1

Modem society, with its propertied minority and its
propertyless proletariat, was not created by the Industrial
Revolution:

No such material cause determined the degradation
from which we suffer. It was the deliberate action of
men, evil will in a few and apathy of will among the
many. . . . 2

The root of our present evils was in fact the Reformation,
and the seizure of the monastic lands. This created a landed
oligarchy and destroyed the civilization of the late Middle
Ages, where the distributive system of property and the
organization of the guilds had been slowly creating a society
in which all men should be 'economically free through the
possession of capital and land*. 3 The recovery of economic
freedom through socialism is in fact impossible: colectivist
measures will merely make capitalism endurable, within its
essential terms. What is being brought into being is not a
collectivist but a servile State, in which

the mass of men shall be constrained by law to labour
to the profit of a minority, but, as the price of such
constraint, shall enjoy a security which the old Capital
ism did not give them. 4

Such a State will be a smoothly running 'machine', in which
aH liuman and organic complexity' 5 will be absent; this is
why it appeals to the tidy-minded bureaucrat who is one
main type of socialist reformer. The other type, the idealist,
when he sees that property cannot simply be confiscated,
and that *buying-out* is not really a change in property-
holding but may even be a new endowment of the capital
ists, will concentrate on getting the owners to recognize
their responsibilities, on the promise of complementary re
sponsibilities undertaken by the wage-earners. Here again,
but now increasingly bound by law, the reforming meas
ures will be producing the servile State.

Belloc's is a very relevant criticism, which still invites

CHLTUEIE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

attention. It was never clear, however, how distributivism
was to be effected, except in a general way by recovery of
the old faith. The redistribution of property, Belioc empha
sized, had to be in significant amounts, and it was this that
capitalism could not alow. He added:

those to whom the argument for existing small prop
erty appeals those whom our Capitalist press bemuses
with the mere numbers of holders in Railway stock or
the National Debt were hardly of the kind who would
follow a serious economic discussion. 6

It is at the point where Belioc leaves off that the Guild
Socialist emphasis begins. A. J. Penty, a direct inheritor of
RusMn and Morris, noted first 'the prejudice against Me
diaeval society which has been created by lying historians
in the past', 7 and continued:

To Mediaeval social arrangements we shall return, not
only because we shall never be able to regain com
plete control over the economic forces in society ex
cept through the agency of restored Guilds, but be
cause it is imperative to return to a simpler state of
society. . . , When any society develops beyond a
certain point, the human mind is unable to get a grip
of all the details necessary to its proper ordering. 8

The result of such development is a spirit of anarchy, which
is 'rife today*, and Is a sign that modem society is begin
ning to break up'. 9 The growing disrespect for all lands of
authority is legitimate, but it may

develop into a revolt against authority and culture in
general. ... To those who realize the dependence of
a healthy social system on living traditions of culture
it is a matter of some concern. For whereas a false
culture like the academic one of today tends to sepa
rate people by dividing them in classes and groups and
inally isolating them as individuals, a true culture like
the great cultures of the past unites them. . . . The
recovery of such a culture is one of our most urgent
needs. 10

INTERREGNUM 203

The Fabian road o collectivism is firmly rejected:

It never presumed to be an artistic ideal. It has ended
in not even daring to be a human one. The Anti-
Socialist who told us that Socialism left human nature
out of account stands justified. 11

The needs of human nature are identical with 'the needs
of art in industry'. 12 The Fabian programme is *far too in
tellectual and too little human ever to get at grips with the
realities of life'. 13 The psychology of its supporters leads
them to seek *an external order' because they lack s any
personal organizing principle*. 14 Such efforts are plausible,
but

the Leisure State and the Servile State are complemen
tarythe one involves the other. 15

The Guild programme, offered as an alternative, pro
posed:

the abolition of the wage-system, and the establish
ment of self-government in industry through a system
of national guilds working in conjunction with other
democratic functional organizations in the community.

The last phrase of this was an amendment from the original
In conjunction with the State', and shows the high-water
point of this kind of criticism. As a programme, the estab
lishment of guilds became immensely difficult and contro
versial when it encountered problems of detail. G. D. H.
Cole, alone among the Guildsmen, was competent to trans
late an emphasis into a practical proposition, but even he,
in the full development of his work, transforms the pro
gramme into an emphasis within existing forms of social
organization. Because of these practical difficulties, which
lie not only in the discovery of a social force to realize such
a programme, but also in the question of the compatibility
of 'self -government in industry* with a high degree of eco
nomic concentration, it has been easy, too easy, to over
look the value both of the emphasis and of the criticism of
other kinds of socialist programme. The underlying prob
lem, as restated by Cole in 1941, is that of ^democracy face

204 CULTURE AKD SOCIETY 1780-1950

to face with hugeness'. 16 The dangers of powerful central
authority, and of a general bureaucratic organization, to
which the Guild Socialists drew attention, have become in
creasingly obvious since they were writing. Further, the
dangers of socialism conceived merely as 'machinery' have
become increasingly apparent, and have already produced
a restlessness, particularly in matters of industrial organiza
tion, among the working class. The gradual dropping of
the reliance on mediaeval ideas and patterns was of course
inevitable, but the line of thinking which is summed up in
the word 'community', rather than in the word 'state', re
mains an essential element of our tradition. Its reliance
on nineteenth-century thinking about culture is clear and
important.

From a number of directions, the emphasis on 'commu
nity* has received increasing support. Many now agree with
Cole, in a point that goes back to the beginning of this tra
dition, in Burke, that the political

democrats set out to strip the individual naked in his
relations to the State, regarding all the older social tis
sue as tainted with aristocratic corruption or privileged
monopoly. Their representative democracy was atom-
istically conceived in terms of millions of voters, each
casting his individual vote into a pool which was some
how mystically to boil up into a General Will, No such
transmutation happened, or could happen. Tom away
from his fellows, from the small groups which he and
they had been painfully learning to manage, the indi
vidual was lost. He could not control the State: it was
too big for him. Democracy in the State was a great
aspiration; but in practice it was largely a sharn, 17

Cole points out, however, that all lands of voluntary demo
cratic associations, based on a real collective experience,
have in fact grown up, and that it is to this 'vital associative
Me' that we must look for the reality of democracy. The
Guild Socialists failed in their effort to extend this over so
ciety as a whole, but their emphasis was, and remains, crea
tive and indispensable.

INTEKBEGNUM 2O5

vi. T. E. Huime

If the interregnum began with the minor scepticism of
MaUock, it ends with a major scepticism, and its only nov
elty, in the work of T. E. Huime. For Huime challenged
the tradition at its roots, in ways that have since taken on
a wide and representative significance. He died at thirty-
four, and his work embodies no complete system, but the
emphases which he made in his preparatory work, to be
seen in the volume Speculations which was collected after
his death, challenge certain aspects of the inherited ways
of thinking with power and effect.

Hulme's basic point is that the humanist tradition, which
has dominated Europe since the Renaissance, is breaking
up; and that this is to be welcomed, since the fundamental
beliefs of humanism are in fact false. He sees romanticism
as the extreme development of humanism, and is concerned
to reject it, and to prepare for a radical transformation of
society, according to different principles which he calls
classical. His distinction between romanticism and the clas
sical is made in this way:

Here is the root of all romanticism: that man, the in
dividual, is an infinite reservoir of possibilities; and if
you can so rearrange society by the destruction of

oppressive order then these possibilities will have a

chance and you will get Progress. One can define the
classical quite clearly as the exact opposite to this.
Man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal
whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tra
dition and organization that anything decent can be
got out of him. 1

This is to be supplemented by another definition:

All Romanticism springs from Rousseau, and the key
to it can be found even in the first sentence of the
Social Contract. ... In other words, man is by na
ture something wonderful, of unlimited powers, and if
hitherto he has not appeared so, it is because of exter-

206 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

nal obstacles and fetters, which it should be the main
business of social politics to remove. What is at the
root of the contrasted system of ideas . . . the classi
cal, pessimistic, or, as its opponents would have it, the
reactionary ideology? This system springs from the ex
actly contrary conception of man; the conviction that
man is by nature bad or limited, and can consequently
only accomplish anything of value by disciplines, ethi
cal, heroic, or political. 2

Thus far, Hulme is doing little more than restate Burke,
although Burke did not use this Romantic/Classical distinc
tion. In his analysis of the driving force of the French Revo
lution, and in his rejection of its principles, Hulme echoes
Burke quite evidently. From this kind of analysis and re
jection there came, we must remember, an important part
of the idea of culture, with its emphasis on order as against
the dominant individualism. But from its beginning in
Burke, and in a direct line down to Arnold, this emphasis
on order was associated with the idea of perfectibility the
gradual perfection of man through cultivation. Hulme re
jects this:

The whole subject has been confused by the failure to
recognize the gap between the regions of vital and
human things, and that of the absolute values of ethics
and religion. We introduce into human things the Per
fection that properly belongs only to the divine, and
thus confuse both human and divine things by not
clearly separating them. . . . We place Perfection
where it should not be on this human plane. As we
are painfully aware that nothing actual can be perfect,
we imagine the perfection to be not where we are, but
some distance along one of the roads. This is the es
sence of all Romanticism. ... If we continue to look
with satisfaction along these roads, we shall always
be unable to understand the religious attitude. . . .
It is the closing of aH the roads, this realization of the
tragic significance of Me, which makes it legitimate to
call all other attitudes shallow. 3

INTERBEGNUM 20/

Thus, even if the Romantic view that man is intrinsically

good, spoilt by circumstance' is rejected, its alternative, in

Hulrne, is not 'that he is intrinsically limited, but disciplined
by order and tradition' towards perfection; it is, rather,
'that he is intrinsically limited, but disciplined by order and
tradition to something fairly decent'. 4 The idea of perfec
tion is wrongly imported from the quite separate religious
sphere. Romanticism is 'spilt religion', 5 and in the same way
culture, by the time of Arnold's definition of it, would also
be, for Hulme, 'spilt religion'.

This argument is Hulme's major contribution; it has since
been widely popularized, notably by T. S. Eliot. The events
of the twentieth century have contributed to its accepta
bility. In so far as the Romantics have been rejected, it is
in these terms. But it is necessary to remember that our
thinking about culture has in itself outgrown Romanticism,
yet not in Hulme's way. While Hulme's alternatives are the
only alternatives, our experience of a violent century will
deny the Romantic complacencies, only to offer us a new
complacency. It may seem strange to describe Hulme's
classicism as complacent, yet so, I think, it has been in
effect. The pressure of the alternatives makes us suppose
that we have to choose between considering man as 'in
trinsically good' or 'Intrinsically limited', and then, in a des
perate world, we are invited to look at the evidence. I can
perhaps best describe these alternatives, however, as pre-
cultural. Neither version of man takes its origin from a view
of man in society, man within a culture; both are based on
speculation about his isolated, pre-social condition. Hulnie
points, rightly, to the 'pseudo-categories* of Romanticism,
and to the more general "pseudo-categories' of humanism,
As a negative critique, this is entirely useful, and it is merely
sentimental to blame it for its pessimism. The contrast of
pessimism and optimism, at these ultimate levels, is to be
seen, rather, as yet another pair of limiting alternatives,
which any adequate thinking about culture will find irrele
vant. My own view is that Hulme is himself confined by a
'pseudo-category', one of

a number of abstract ideas, of which we are as a matter

208 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

of fact unconscious. We do not see them, but see other
things through them. 6

This pseudo-category is the acceptance, as fact, of an ulti
mate, essential condition of man: a nature which underlies,
and precedes, his actual manifestation in particular circum
stances. It is not that we may not speculate on this, but
that if we accept it we are accepting something which no
man can ever experience as a fact. We are then erecting a
pseudo-category which prevents us from thinking ade
quately about culture at all, for to think about culture can
only be to think about common experience. I agree with
Hulme that romanticism is 'spilt religion'. I think also that
much of the early definition of culture was also 'spilt re
ligion*. But I see what he calls romanticism and what he
calls 'the classical' as alternative versions within a pseudo-
category. There is in fact no reason why we should accept
either. Experience moves within an actual situation, in di
rections which the forces within that situation will alone
determine. A version of man as perfectible or limited, a
spirit of humane optimism or of tragic pessimism, can be
imported into this situation, but as little more than a pos
ture. As interpretation any such attitude may be important,
but as programme any is irrelevant. At its worst, such an
attitude merely rationalizes the phantasy of being above
the common situation, able to direct it by taking thought
in lids way or in that Hulme wanted hard, bare, unsenti
mental thinking, but he hardly achieved it. His function
was the replacement of one rationalization by another, but
we cannot think about culture until we are rid of both. The
acceptance of actual experience, commitment to a real situ
ation from which by no effort of abstraction we can escape,
is harder than Hulme supposed, and needs a pulling-down
of further pseudo-categories which he, in common with his
direct successors, failed to notice. The psychology that is
revealed in Cinders, his notes for a Weltanschauung, in
dicates well enough the barriers against experience which
he had to erect.

From his basic position, Hulme derived certain views on
politics, and certain important views on art. In politics, he

INTEKREGNtJM 2OQ

was concerned to reject the idea of Progress as the product
of 'democratic romanticism', and to point out that it pro
ceeded from a *body of middle-class thought', 7 which had
no necessary connexion with the working-class movement.
His own view was that

no theory that is not fully moved "by the conception of
justice asserting the equality of men, and which can
not offer something to all men, deserves or is likely to
have any future. 8

With this in mind, he approved SoreTs critique of demo
cratic ideology, distinguishing it from other kinds of criti
cism:

Some of these are merely dilettante, having little sense
of reality, while others are really vicious, in that they
play with the idea of inequality.

All this is useful as far as it goes, but he never took the
points further, and found little practical allegiance. The
combination of 'revolutionary economics* with the 'classi
cal* spirit in elides seemed to him likely to be emancipating,
but the combination has not yet occurred, in practice, ex
cept in the degrading caricature of Fascism, with which
Hulme in certain moods can be associated, but from which
ne is essentially to be distinguished because of Ms adher
ence to equality, a saving clause which some of his suc
cessors either dropped or never possessed.

The views on art are more important, if only because
they have become the commonplaces of English criticism.
This is not only so in language his advocacy of a 'dry hard
ness' 10 ; his description of the Romantic attitude as 'poetry
that isn't damp isn't poetry at alT, 11 or of romanticism as
'always flying, flying over abysses, flying up into the eternal
gases . . . the word infinite in every other line*. 12 It is so
also in certain now characteristic doctrines: the rejection of
naturalism, the tibeory of 'geometrical art', 13 the belief in
Tines which are clean, clear-cut, and mechanical*, 14 the
view of the coming relation between art and machinery: *it
has nothing whatever to do with the superficial notion that
one must beautify machinery. It is not a question of dealing

CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

with machinery in the spirit and with the methods of exist
ing art, but of the creation of a new art having an organiza
tion, and governed by principles, which are at present ex
emplified unintentionally, as it were, in machinery/ 15 In
all this, Hulme is a genuine forerunner: the first important
anti-Romantic critic.

He accepts wholly, of course, the nineteenth-century
view of the relation between the principles of a society and
the character of its art. He interprets the new movements
in art as the first signs of a general change in principles,
just as he has interpreted the art of past periods in terms of
this kind of change. He is an extraordinarily stimulating
critic, and his place at the head of the tradition which we
associate with Eliot, or in another category with Read, re
quires recognition and emphasis. The questions which we
are then left with are important: whether the new mood in
art, the rejection of Romanticism, is in fact based on
Hulme's 'classical* view of man, carrying it along, as it were
inevitably, with it; or whether, in noticing and helping to
form this mood, Hulme was responding correctly but in
terpreting wrongly, within his 'pseudo-category*. These are
questions which we might wish Hulme had lived to help
us answer; his death in action in 1917 was in every way a
loss. But they are questions, also, which carry us beyond
the interregnum, into our own immediate period.

PART III

TWENTIETH-CENTURY
OPINIONS

CHAPTER I

D. H. LAWRENCE

IT is easy to be aware of Lawrence's great effect on our
thinking about social values, but it is difficult, for a number
of reasons, to give any exact account of his actual con
tribution. It is not only that the public projection of him is
very different from his actual work, and that this has led to
important misunderstandings (that he believed that *sex
solves everything*; that he was *a precursor of the Fascist
emphasis on blood'). These, in the end, are matters of ig
norance, and ignorance, though always formidable, can
always be faced. The major difficulties are, I think, two in
number. First, there is the fact that Lawrence's position, in
the question of social values, is an amalgam of original and
derived ideas. Yet, because of the intensity with which he
took up and worked over what he had learned from others,
this is, in practice, very difficult to sort out. Secondly, Law
rence's main original contribution is as a novelist, yet Ms
general writing, in essays and letters, which for obvious
reasons expresses most clearly his social ideas, cannot really
be separated or judged apart from the novels. For example,
his vital study of relationships, which is the basis of Ms
original contribution to our social thinking, is naturally con
ducted in the novels and stories, and has constantly to be
turned to for evidence, even though it is very difficult, for
technical reasons, to use it just as evidence. Again, he has
certain clear positives, which appear in a central position
in his general arguments, yet wMch again depend on what
he learned, and shows, in the writing of the novels. We can
quote him, for example, on vitality, or on spontaneity, or
on relationship, but to realize these, as the matters of sub
stance which for him they were, we can only go, as readers,
to this or that novel.

The thinker of whom one is most often reminded, as one
goes through Lawrence's social writings, is Carlyle. There

214 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

is more ttian a casual resemblance between the two men,
in a number of ways, and anyone who has read Carlyle will
see the continuity of such writing as this, in Lawrence;

The Pisgah-top of spiritual oneness looks down upon a
hopeless squalor of industrialism, the huge cemetery
of human hopes. This is our Promised Land. . . . The
aeroplane descends and lays her eggshells of empty
tin-cans on the top of Everest, in the Ultima Thule,
and al over the North Pole; not to speak of tractors
waddling across the inviolate Sahara and over the jags
of Arabia Petraea, laying the same addled eggs of our
civilization, tin cans, in every camp-nest. . . .* . . . It
is the joy for ever, the agony for ever, and above all,
the fight for ever. For all the universe is alive, and
whirling in the same fight, the same joy and anguish.
The vast demon of life has made himself habits which,
except in the whitest heat of desire and rage, he will
never break. And these habits are the laws of our sci
entific universe. But al the laws of physics, dynamics,
kinetics, statics, al are but the settled habits of a vast
living incomprehensibility, and they can all be broken,
superseded, in a moment of great extremity. 2

The bitter sweep of this critique of industrialism; this vi
brant repetitive hymn to the Vast incomprehensibility':
these, across eighty years, belong uniquely to Lawrence
and Carlyle, and the resemblance, which is not only imita
tion, is remarkable. Lawrence takes over the major criticism
of industrialism from the nineteenth-century tradition, on
point after point, but in tone he remains more like Carlyle
than any other writer in the tradition, then or since. There
is in each the same mixture of argument, satire, name-
calling, and sudden wild bitterness. The case is reasoned
and yet breaks again and again into a blind passion of re
jection, of which the tenor is not merely negative but anni
hilatinga threshing after power, which is to be known,
ultimately, only in that force of mystery at the edge of
which the human articulation breaks down. The impact of
each man on the generation which succeeded him is re
markably similar in quality: an impact not so much of

D. H. LAWBENCE 21 5

doctrines as o an inclusive, compelling, general revelation.*
The points which Lawrence took over from the nine
teenth-century tradition can be briefly illustrated. There is,
first, the general condemnation of industrialism as an atti
tude of mind:

The industrial problem arises from the base forcing of
all human energy into a competition of mere acqui
sition. 3

Then, when narrowed to competitive acquisitiveness, hu
man purpose is seen as debased to 'sheer mechanical ma
terialism*:

When pure mechanization or materialism sets in, the
soul is automatically pivoted, and the most diverse of
creatures fall into a common mechanical unison. This
we see in America. It is not a homogeneous, spontane
ous coherence so much as a disintegrated amorphous-
ness which lends itself to perfect mechanical unison. 4

Mechanical., disintegrated, amorphous: these are the con
tinuing key words to describe the effect of the industrial
priorities on individuals and on the whole society. It is this
condition of mind, rather than industry as such, which is
seen as having led to the ugliness of an industrial society,
on which Lawrence is always emphatic:

The real tragedy of England, as I see it, is the tragedy
of ugliness. The country is so lovely: the man-made
Engknd is so vile. ... It was ugliness which be
trayed the spirit of man, in the nineteenth century.
The great crime which the moneyed classes and pro
moters of industry committed in the palmy Victorian
days was the condemning of the workers to ugliness,
ugliness, ugliness: meanness and formless and ugly sur
roundings, ugly ideals, ugly religion, ugly hope, ugly

* I have read, since writing this paragraph, Dr Leavis's censure
(in D. H. Lawrence, Novelist) on a comparison of Lawrence
with Carlyle. He traces the comparison to Desmond MacCartihy,
and predicts that it will 'recur.* Well, here it is, but not, so far as
I am concerned, from that source. As my comparison stands, I
see no reason for withdrawal.

2l6 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

love, ugly clothes, ugly furniture, ugly houses, ugly
relationship between workers and employers. The hu
man soul needs actual beauty even more than bread. 5

Or again:

The blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs
glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coal-
dust, the pavements wet and black. It was as if dis-
malness had soaked through and through everything.
The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter nega
tion of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the
instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast
has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty
was appalling. . . . 6

Lawrence is here carrying on a known judgement, yet with
his own quick perception and in his own distinctive accent.
This kind o observation has to be made again and again, in
every generation, not only because the atmosphere of in
dustrialism tends to breed habituation, but also because
(in ironic tribute to the strength of the tradition of protest)
it is common to shift the ugliness and evil of industrialism
out of the present, back into the *bad old days'. The re
minder that the thing is still here has repeatedly to be
issued. Lawrence is little concerned, historically, with the
origins of industrialism. For him, in this century, it is a
received fact, and at the centre of it is the 'forcing of all
human energy into a competition of mere acquisition* the
common element in all the diverse interpretations of which
the tradition is composed.

Lawrence's starting point is, then, familiar ground. The
Inherited ideas were there to clarify his first sense of crisis.
When we think of Lawrence, we concentrate, understand
ably, on the adult Me, in all its restless dedication. That he
was the son of a miner adds, commonly, a certain pathetic
or sentimental interest; we relate the adult life back to it,
in a personal way. But the real importance of Lawrence's
origins is not and cannot be a matter of retrospect from the
adult Me. It is, rather, that his first social responses were
those, not of a man observing the processes of industrialism,

B. H. LAWBENCE 217

but of one caught in them, at an exposed point, and des
tined, in the normal course, to be enlisted in their regi
ments. That he escaped enlistment is now so well known

to us that it is difficult to realize the thing as it happened,
in its living sequence. It is only by hard fighting, and, fur
ther, by the fortune of fighting on a favourable front, that
anyone born into the industrial working class escapes Ms
function of replacement. Lawrence could not be certain, at
the time when his fundamental social responses were form
ing, that he could so escape. That he was exceptionally
gifted exacerbated the problem, although later it was to
help towards solving it. Yet the problem of adjustment to
the disciplines of industrialism, not merely in day-to-day
matters, but in the required basic adjustments of feeling, is
common and general. In remembering the occasional 'vic
tories'the escapes from the required adjustment we for
get the innumerable and persistent defeats. Lawrence did
not forget, because he was not outside the process, meeting
those who had escaped, and forming his estimate of the
problem from this very limited evidence. For him, rather,
the whole process had been lived, and he was the more
conscious of the general failure, and thus of the general
character of the system:

In my generation, the boys I went to school with,

colliers now, have all been beaten down, what with
the dm-dm-dinning of Board Schools, books, cinemas,
clergymen, the whole national and human conscious
ness hammering on the fact of material prosperity
above aE things. 7

Lawrence could not have written this, with such a phrase
as *all been beaten down 1 , if the pressures had not been so
intensely and personally felt. In the early stages of the im
position of the industrial system, an observer could see
adult men and women, grown to another way of life, being
*beaten down' into the new functions and the new feelings.
But once industrialism was established, an observer could
hardly see this. Tension would be apparent to him, only in
those who had escaped, or half-escaped. The rest, 'the
masses', would normally appear to him fully formed the

21 8 CU3LTUBE AND SOCIETY

Ibeating down' had happened, and he had not seen It. It
thus became possible for men in such a position to believe,

and with a show of reason to argue, that the residual ma
jority, the 'masses', had, essentially, got the way of life they

wanted, or, even, the way of life they deserved the way
*best fitted* for them. Only an occasional generous spirit
could construct, from his own experience, the vision of an
alternative possibility; even this, because it had to be vision,
was always in danger of simplification or sentimentality.
The outstanding value of Lawrence's development is that
he was in a position to know the living process as a matter
of common rather than of special experience. He had, fur
ther, the personal power of understanding and expressing
this. While the thing was being lived, however, and while
the pressures were not theoretic but actual, the inherited
criticism of the industrial system was obviously of the great
est importance to him. It served to clarify and to generalize
what had otherwise been a confused and personal issue. It
is not too much to say that he built his whole intellectual
life on the foundation of this tradition.

A man can live only one Me, and the greater part of
Lawrence's strength was taken up by an effort which in
terms of ideas achieved perhaps less than had already been
reached by different paths. Lawrence was so involved with
the business of getting free of the industrial system that he
never came seriously to the problem of changing it, al
though he knew that since the problem was common an
individual solution was only a cry in the wind. It would be
absurd to blame him on these grounds. It is not so much
that he was an artist, and thus supposedly condemned, by
romantic theory, to individual solutions. In fact, as we
know, Lawrence spent a good deal of time trying to gen
eralize about the necessary common change; he was deeply
committed, all his life, to the idea of re-forming society. But
his main energy went, and had to go, to the business of
personal liberation from the system. Because he understood
the issue in its actual depth, he knew that this liberation
was not merely a matter of escaping a routine industrial
job, or of getting an education, or of moving into the mid
dle class. These things, in Lawrence's terms, were more of

D. E. LAWBENGE

an evasion than what lie actually came to do. Mitigation
of the physical discomforts, of the actual injustices, or of

the sense of lost opportunity, was no kind of liberation from
the 'base forcing of al human energy into a competition of
mere acquisition'. His business was the recovery of other
purposes, to which the human energy might be directed.
What he lived was the break-out, not theoretically, nor in
any Utopian construction, but as it was possible to him, in
immediate terms, in opposition alike to the Ibase forcing*
and to his own weakness. What he achieved, in his life,
was an antithesis to the powerful industrial thesis which
had been proposed for him. But this, in certain of its as
pects, was never more than a mere rejection, a habit of
evasion: the industrial system was so strong, and he had
been so fiercely exposed to it, that at times there was little
that he or any man could do but run. This aspect, however,
is comparatively superficial. The weakness of the exclu
sively biographical treatment of Lawrence, with its empha
sis on the restless wanderings and the approach to any way
of Me but his own, lies in the fact that these things were
only contingencies, whereas the dedication, and the value,
were in the 'endless venture into consciousness*, which was
his work as man and writer.

Lawrence is often dramatized as the familiar romantic
figure who 'rejects the claims of society*. In fact, he knew
too much about society, and knew it too directly, to be
deceived for long by anything so foolish. He saw this version
of individualism as a veneer on the consequences of in
dustrialism.

We have frustrated that instinct of community which
would make us unite in pride and dignity in the bigger
gesture of the citizen, not the cottager. 8

The 'instinct of community* was vital in his thinking:
deeper and stronger, he argued, than even the sexual in
stinct. He attacked the industrial society of England, not
because it offered community to the individual, but because
it frustrated it. In this, again, he is wholly in line with the
tradition. If in his own life he 'rejected the claims of so
ciety', it was not because he did not understand the im-

2,2,0 CULTTOE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

portance of community, but because, in industrial England,

lie could find none. Almost certainly, he underestimated
the degree of community that might have been available
to him; the compulsion to get away was sa fierce, and he

was personally very weak and exposed. But he was reject
ing, not the claims of society, but the claims of industrial
society. He was not a vagrant, to live by dodging; but an
exile, committed to a different social principle. The vagrant
wants the system to stay as it is, so long as he can go on
dodging it while stall being maintained by it. The exile, on
the contrary, wants to see the system changed, so that he
can come home. This latter is, in the end, Lawrence's po
sition.

Lawrence started, then, from the criticism of industrial
society which made sense of his own social experience, and
which gave title to his refusal to be basely forced*. But
alongside this ratifying principle of denial he had the rich
experience of childhood in a working-class family, in which
most of his positives lay. What such a childhood gave was
certainly not tranquillity or security; it did not even, in the
ordinary sense, give happiness. But it gave what to Law
rence was more important than these things: the sense of
close quick relationship, which came to matter more than
anything else. This was the positive result of the life of the
family in a small house, where there were no such devices of
separation of children and parents as the sending-away to
school, or the handing-over to servants, or the relegation
to nursery or playroom. Comment on this life (usually by
those who have not experienced it) tends to emphasize the
noisier factors: the fact that rows are always in the open;
that there is no privacy in crisis; that want breaks through
the small margin of material security and leads to mutual
blame and anger. It is not that Lawrence, like any child,
did not suffer from these things. It is rather that, in such a
life, the suffering and the giving of comfort, the common
want and the common remedy, the open row and the open
maMng-up, are all part of a continuous life which, in good
and bad, makes for a whole attachment. Lawrence learned
from this experience that sense of the continuous flow and
recoil of sympathy which was always, in his writing, the

D. H. LAWEENCE 221

essential process of living. His idea of close spontaneous
living rests on this foundation, and he had no temptation to
idealize it into the pursuit of happiness: things were too
close to him for anything so abstract. Further, there is an
important sense in which the working-class family is an evi
dent and mutual economic unit, within which both rights
and responsibilities are immediately contained. The mate
rial processes of satisfying human needs are not separated
from personal relationships; and Lawrence knew from this,
not only that the processes must be accepted (he was firm
on this through all his subsequent life, to the surprise of
friends for whom these things had normally been the func
tion of servants), but also that a common life has to be
made on the basis of a correspondence between work re
lationships and personal relationships: something, again,
which was only available, if at all, as an abstraction, to
those whose first model of society, in the family, had been
hierarchical, separative and inclusive of the element of paid
substitute labour Carlyle's 'cash-nexus*. The intellectual
critiques of industrialism as a system were therefore rein
forced and prepared for by all he knew of primary relation
ships. It is no accident that the early chapters of Sons and
Lovers are at once a marvellous re-creation of this close,
active, contained family Me, and also in general terms an
indictment of the pressures of industrialism. Almost all that
he learned in this way was by contrasts, and this element
of contrast was reinforced by the accident that he lived
on a kind of frontier, within sight both, of industrial and of
agricultural England. In the family and out of it, in the
Breach and at Haggs Farm, he learned on his own senses
the crisis of industrial England. When the family was
broken by the death of Ms mother, and when lie small
world of the family had to be replaced by the world of
wages and hiring, it was like a personal death, and from
then on he was an exile, in spirit and later in fact.

The bridge across which lie escaped was, in the widest
sense, intellectual. He could read Ms way out in spirit, and
he could write Ms way out in fact. It has recently been
most valuably emphasized, by F. R. Leavis, that the
provincial culture wMch was available to him was very

222 CU1LTUKE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

much more rich and exciting than the usual accounts infer.
The chapel, the literary society attached to it, the group of
adolescents with whom he could read and talk: these were
not the *drab, earnest institutions* of the observers' cliches,
but active, serious, and, above all, wholehearted in energy.
What they lacked in variety and in contact with different
ways of living was to a large extent balanced by just that
earnestness which is so much larger and finer a thing than
the fear of it which has converted the word into a gesture
of derision. Lawrence's formal education, it must be remem
bered, was also by no means negligible.

This then, in summary, is the background of Lawrence's
inherited ideas and social experience. It remains to examine
his consequent thinking about community, at the centre of
his discussion of social values. This depends on what was
his major Venture into consciousness': the attempt to real
ize that range of living, human energy which the existing
system had narrowed and crippled. He put one of Ms basic
beliefs in this way:

You can have life two ways. Either everything is
created from the mind, downwards; or else everything
proceeds from the creative quick, outwards into exfoli
ation and blossom. . . . The actual living quick itself
is alone the creative reality. 9

Lawrence's exploration was into this 'creative reality', not
as an idea, but in its actual processes:

The quick of self is there. You needn't try to get be
hind it As leave try to get behind the sun. 10

This 'quick of self', in any living being, is the basis of in
dividuality:

A man's self is a law unto itself, not unto himself, mind
you. . . . The living self has one purpose only: to
come into its own fulness of being. . . . But this com
ing into full, spontaneous being is the most difficult
thing of all. ... The only thing man has to trust to
in coming to himself is his desire and his impulse. But
both desire and impulse tend to fall into mechanical
automatism: to fall from spontaneous reality into dead

D. H. LAWBENCE 2,2,$

or material reality. . . . All education must tend
against this fall; and all our efforts in all our life must
be to preserve 'the soul free and spontaneous . . . the
life-activity must never be degraded into a Iked activ
ity. There can be no ideal goal for human life. . . .
There is no pulling open the buds to see what the blos
som will be. Leaves must unroll, buds swell and open,
and then the blossom. And even after that, when the
flower dies and the leaves fall, still we shall not know.
. . . We know the lower of today, but the flower of
tomorrow is all beyond us. 11

Lawrence wrote nothing more important than this, although
he wrote it differently, elsewhere, using different terms and
methods. The danger is that we recognize this too quickly
as 'Laurentian' (that 'gorgeous befeathered snail of an ego
and a personality* 12 which. Lawrence and his writing could
be at their worst), and accept it or pass it by without real
attention. For it is quite easy to grasp as an abstraction, but
very difficult in any more substantial way. In al Lawrence's
writing of this Mud one is reminded of Coleridge, whose
terms were essentially so different, and yet whose emphasis
was so very much the same: an emphasis, felt towards in
metaphor, on the preservation of the 'spontaneous life-
activity' against those rigidities of category and abstraction,
of which the industrial system was so powerful a particular
embodiment. This sense of life is not obscurantism, as it is
sometimes represented to be. It is a particular wisdom, a
particular kind of reverence, which at once denies, not only
the *base forcing of all human energy into a competition of
mere acquisition*, but also the domrnative redirection of this
energy into new fixed categories. I believe that it sets a
standard, in our attitudes to ourselves and to other human
beings, which can in experience be practically known and
recognized, and by which al social proposals must sub
mit themselves to be judged. It can be seen, as a positive, in
thinkers as diverse as Burke and Cobbett, as Morris and
Lawrence. It is unlikely to reach an agreed end in our think
ing., but it is difficult to know where else to begin. We have
only the melancholy evidence of powerful and clashing

224 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

movements that begin elsewhere. When this is so, every
renewed affirmation counts.

For Lawrence, the affirmation led on to an interesting
declaration of faith in democracy, but this was something
rather different from the democracy of, say, a Utilitarian:

So, we know the first great purpose of Democracy; that
each man shall be spontaneously himselfeach man
himself, each woman herself, without any question of
equality or inequality entering in at all; and that no
man shall try to determine the being of any other man,
or of any other woman. 13

At first sight, this looks like, not democracy, but a kind of
romantic anarchism. Yet it is more than this, essentially,
even though it remains very much a first term. Our ques
tion to those who would reject it must rest on the phrase
'no man shall try to determine the being of any other man',
We must ask, and require the answer, of anyone with a
social philosophy, whether this principle is accepted or de
nied. Some of the most generous social movements have
come to fail because, at heart, they have denied this. And
it is much the same, in effect, whether such determination
. of human beings is given title by the abstractions of produc
tion or service, of the glory of the race or good citizenship.
For *to try to determine the being of any other man' is
indeed, as Lawrence emphasized, an arrogant and base
forcing.

To Lawrence, the weakness of modern social movements
was that they all seemed to depend on the assumption of a
Iked activity* for man, the 'life activity' forced into ixed
ideals. He found this

horribly true of modern democracy socialism, con
servatism, bolshevism, liberalism, republicanism, com
munism; all alike. The one principle that governs all
the isms is the same: the principle of the idealized unit,
the possessor of property. Man has his highest fulfil
ment as a possessor of property: so they all say,
really.**

And from this he concludes:

D. H. LAWBENCE 22$

All discussion and idealizing of the possession of prop
erty, whether individual or group or State possession,
amounts now to no more than a fatal betrayal of the
spontaneous self. . . . Property is only there to be
used, not to be possessed . . . possession is a land of
illness of the spirit. . . . When men are no longer
obsessed with the desire to possess property, or with
the parallel desire to prevent another man's possessing
it, then, and only then, shall we be gkd to turn it
over to the State. Our way of State-ownership is merely
a farcical exchange of words, not of ways. 15

In this, Lawrence is very close to the socialism of a man like
Morris, and there can be little doubt that he and Morris
would have felt alike about much that has subsequently
passed for socialism.

Lawrence's attitude to the question of equality springs
from the same sources in feeling. He writes:

Society means people living together. People must live
together. And to live together, they must have some
Standard, some Material Standard. This is where the
Average comes in. And this is where Socialism and
Modem Democracy come in. For Democracy and So
cialism rest upon the Equality of Man, which is the
Average. And this is sound enough, so long as the
Average represents the real basic material needs of
mankind: basic material needs: we insist and insist
again. For Society, or Democracy, or any Political
State or Community exists not for the sake of the in
dividual, nor should ever exist for the sake of the in
dividual, but simply to establish the Average, in or
der to make living together possible: that is, to make
proper facilities for every man's clothing, feeding, hous
ing himself, working, sleeping, mating, playing, ac
cording to his necessity as a common unit, an average.
Everything beyond that common necessity depends on
himself alone. 16

This idea of equality is "sound enough'. Yet when it is not
a question of material needs but of whole human beings,

226 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

we cannot say that all men are equal. We cannot say
A = B. Nor can we say that men are unequal. We may
not declare that A = B + C. . . . One man is neither
equal nor unequal to another man. When I stand in
the presence of another man, and I am my own pure
self, am I aware of the presence of an equal, or of an
Inferior, or of a superior? I am not. When I stand with
another man, who is himself, and when I am truly my
self, then I am only aware of a Presence, and of the
strange reality of Otherness. There is me, and there is
another being. . . . There is no comparing or esti
mating. There is only this strange recognition of pres
ent otherness. I may be glad, angry, or sad, because
of the presence of the other. But still no comparison
enters in. Comparison enters only when one of us de
parts from his own integral being, and enters the ma
terial mechanical world. Then equality and inequality
starts at once. 17

This seems to me to be the best tiling that has been written
about equality in our period. It gives no title to any defence
of material inequality, which in fact is what is usually de
fended. But it removes from the idea of equality that ele
ment of mechanical abstraction which has often been felt
in it The emphasis on relationship, on the recognition and
acceptance of 'present otherness', could perhaps only have
come from a man who had made Lawrence's particular
Venture into consciousness'. We should remember the em
phasis when Lawrence, under the tensions of his exile, falls
at times into an attitude like that of the later Carlyle, with
an emphasis on the recognition of 'superior' beings and of
the need to bow down and submit to them. This 'following
after power', in Carlyle's phrase, is always a failure of the
Mnd of relationship which Lawrence has here described:
the impatient frustrated relapse into the attempt to 'deter
mine another man's being'. Lawrence can show us, more
clearly than anyone, where in this he himself went wrong.
I have referred to the tensions of exile, and this aspect of
Lawrence's work should receive the final stress. In his basic
attitudes he is so much within the tradition we have been

D. H. LAWBENCE -227

following, has indeed so much in common with a socialist
like Morris, that it is at first difficult to understand why his
influence should have appeared to lead in other directions.

One reason, as has been mentioned, is that he has been
vulgarized into a romantic rebel, a type of the 'free indi
vidual'. There is, of course, just enough in his life and work
to make this vulgarization plausible. Yet it cannot really
be sustained. We have only to remember this:

Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not
when they are straying and breaking away. 18

And again:

Men are free when they belong to a living, organic,
believing community, active in fulfilling some unful
filled, perhaps unrealized purpose. 10

But this in practice was the cry of an exile: of a man who
wanted to commit himself, yet who rejected the terms of the
available commitments. Lawrence's rejection had to be so
intense, if he was to get clear at all, that he was led into a
weakness, which found its rationalization. He kept wanting
to see a change in society, but he could conclude:

Every attempt at preordaining a new material world
only adds another last straw to the load that already
has broken so many backs. If we are to keep our
backs unbroken, we must deposit all property on the
ground, and learn to walk without it. We must stand
aside. And when many men stand aside, they stand
in a new world; a new world of man has come to
pass. 20

This is the end of the rainbow: the sequel to that Rananim
which had been one more in the series of attempts to evade
the issues: an idealized substitute community, whether
Pantisocracy, New Harmony, or the Guild of St George.
Lawrence's point is that the change must come first in feel
ing, but almost everything to which he had borne witness
might have shown how much In the head' this conclusion
was. He knew all about the processes of Seating down*. He
knew, none better, how the consciousness and the environ-

2,2,8 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

ment were linked, and what it cost even an exceptional man
to make his ragged breatHess escape. There is something

false, in the end, in the way he tries to separate the material
issues and lie issues in feeling, for he had had the oppor
tunity of knowing, and indeed had learned, how closely in-
termeshed these issues were. It is not a question of the old
debate on which conditions are primary. It is that in ac
tuality the pressures, and the responses creating new pres
sures, form into a whole process, which

is there. You needn't try to get behind it. As leave try
to get behind the sun.

Lawrence came to rationalize and to generalize his own
necessary exile, and to give it the appearance of freedom.
His separation of the material issues from the issues in con
sciousness was an analogy of his own temporary condition.
There is something, in the strict sense, suburban about this.
The attempt to separate material needs, and the ways in
which they are to be met, from human purpose and the
development of being and relationship, is the suburban
separation of 'work* and life* which has been the most com
mon response of all to the difficulties of industrialism. It is
not that the issues in consciousness ought to be set aside
while the material ends are pursued. It is that because the
process is whole, so must change be whole: whole in con
ception, common in effort. The living, organic, believing
community' will not be created by standing aside, although
the effort towards it in consciousness is at least as important
as the material effort. The tragedy of Lawrence, the
working-class boy, is that he did not live to come home. It
is a tragedy, moreover, common enough in its incidence to
exempt him from the impertinences of personal blame.

The venture into consciousness remains, as a sufficient
life's work. Towards the end, when he had revisited the
milling country where the pressures of industrialisiB were
most explicit and most evident, he shaped, as a creative
response, the sense of immediate relationship which informs
Lady Chatterley's Lover 9 and which he had earlier explored
in The Rainbow, Women in Love and St Mawr. This is only
the climax of his exploration into those elements of human

D. H. 1LAWKENCE

energy which were denied by the 1base forcing', and which
might yet overthrow it. It is profoundly important to realize
that Lawrence's exploration of sexual experience is made,
always, in this context. To isolate this exploration, as it was
tempting for some of his readers to do, is not only to mis
understand Lawrence but to expose Titm to the scandal
from which, in his lifetime, he scandalously suffered. "This
which we are must cease to be, that we may come to pass
in another being* 21 : this, throughout, is the emphasis. And,
just as the recovery of the human spirit from the base forc
ing of industrialism must lie in recovery of 'the creative
reality, the actual living quick itself*, so does this recovery
depend on the ways in which this reality can be most im
mediately apprehended: 'the source of all life and knowl
edge is in man and woman, and the source of all living is
in the interchange and meeting and mingling of these
two'. 22 It is not that sexual experience is 'the answer' to
industrialism, or to its ways of thinking and feeling. On the
contrary, Lawrence argues, the poisons of the *base forc
ing' have extended themselves into this. His clearest general
exposition of this comes in the essay on Galsworthy, where
he derides the proposition of *Pa-assion*, and its related
promiscuity, as alternatives to the emphasis on money or
property which follows from men being 'only materially and
socially conscious*. The idea of sex as a reserve area of feel
ing, or as a means of Byronic revolt from the conventions
of money and property (a Forsyte turning into an anti-
Forsyte) , is wholly repugnant to Lawrence. People who act
in this way are like all the rest of the modem middle-class
rebels, not in rebellion at all; they are merely social beings
behaving in an anti-social manner*. 23 The real meaning of
sex, Lawrence argues, is that it 'involves the whole of a hu
man being*. The alternative to the "base forcing' into the
competition for money and property is not sexual adventure,
nor the available sexual emphasis, but again a return to the
'quick of self, from which whole relationships, including
whole sexual relationships, may grow. The final emphasis,
which all Lawrence's convincing explorations into the
'quick of self both illumine and realize, is his criticism of
Industrial civilization:

23O CULTURE AND SOCIETY

If only our civilization had taught us ... how to keep
the ire of sex clear and alive, flickering or glowing or
blazing in all its varying degrees of strength and com
munication, we might, all of us, have lived all our lives
in love, which means we should be kindled and full of
zest in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of things. 24

Or again, as an adequate summary of the whole Venture
into consciousness*:

Our civilization . . . has almost destroyed the natural
flow of common sympathy between men and men, and
men and women. And it is this that I want to restore
into life. 25

CHAPTER II

R, EL TAWNEY

THE author of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism is a pro
fessional historian, subject at once to disciplines and limita
tions which the prophets and critics of the nineteenth cen
tury did not observe. Yet it seems to be true that the work
of a whole school of economic and social historians in our
own century has been directed, essentially, to the detailed
investigation of the general judgements which, from the
nineteenth century, they inherited. The outline was re
ceived, and the professional researches were directed to
wards the details of its area, and at times to its revision.
Tawney, more clearly perhaps than any other historian
in this century, begins not so much from the received gen
eral outline (for this is hardly a distinguishing character
istic) as from the inherited judgements and questions. The
influence in particular of Rusldn and of Arnold is difficult
not to discern; and behind this influence, as we have seen,
is a whole nineteenth-century tradition. A work like Reli-
gion and the Rise of Capitalism illustrates most clearly the
difference between professional historian and general critic.
Yet, if we compare it with a work like Southey's Colloquies,
which stands near the head of the tradition, we remark not
only the gain the achievement of detailed exposition over
scattered assertion but also in moral terms the continuity.
This emphasis on the moral terms is the most important,
and the ratifying, quality of Tawney's work. It is no accident
that alongside Ms formal historical enquiries he should have
published such works as Equality and The Acquisitive So
ciety: works which are historically informed certainly, but
which are informed also with those special qualities of per
sonal experience and affirmed morality which bring them
within the categories of the traditional great debate. Taw
ney's importance is that he is a social critic and a moralist

232 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

who brings to Ms disclaarge of these functions the particular
equipment of a professional historian.

Equality and The Acquisitive Society are important con
tributions to the tradition. Equality is the more important,
but The Acquisitive Society is a fine restatement and re
valuation of a traditional case. The emphasis of both books
can be marked by a sentence from the second chapter of
The Acquisitive Society:

As long as men are men, a poor society cannot be too
poor to find a right order of life, nor a rich society too
rich to have need to seek it. 1

The challenge of such an attitude is, as always, radical.

The two most important elements in The Acquisitive So
ciety are the general discussion of changes in social theory,
and the analysis of the idea of Industrialism. The former is
summarized in this way*.

The difference between the England of Shakespeare,
still visited by the ghosts of the Middle Ages, and the
England which emerged in 1700 from the fierce po
lemics of the last two generations, was a difference of
social and political theory even more than of constitu
tional and political arrangements. Not only the facts,
but the minds which appraised them, were profoundly
modified. . . . The natural consequence of the abdi
cation of authorities which had stood, however imper
fectly, for a common purpose in social organization,
was the gradual disappearance from social thought of
the idea of purpose itself. Its place in the eighteenth
century was taken by the idea of mechanism. The con
ception of men as united to each other, and of all man
kind as united to God, by mutual obligations arising
from their relation to a common end, ceased to be im
pressed upon men's minds. 2

Thus far, the essence of this argument would have been
familiar to Southey, Coleridge or Arnold, as it is also the
ground-swell of the eloquent protests of Burke. Tawney
continues his argument, however, with an appreciation

R. EL TAWNSY 233

of the new Liberalism which would then have been im
possible:

In the modem revulsion against economic tyranny,
there is a disposition to represent the writers who stand
on the threshold of the age of capitalist industry as
the prophets of a vulgar materialism, which would
sacrifice every human aspiration to the pursuit of
riches. No interpretation could be more misleading.
. , . The grand enemy of the age was monopoly; the
batdecry with which enlightenment marched against
it was the abolition of privilege; its ideal was a society
where each man had free access to the economic op
portunities which he could use and enjoy the wealth
which by his efforts he had created. That school of
thought represented all, or nearly all, that was humane
and intelligent in the mind of the age. It was indi
vidualistic., not because it valued riches as the main
end of man, but because it had a high sense of human
dignity, and desired that men should be free to become
themselves. 3

The movements of liberalism and enlightenment were,
Tawney argues, wholly necessary, but their doctrines, his
torically considered, were 'crystallized . . . while the new
industrial order was still young and its effects unknown'.
The nineteenth-century individiaalism which succeeded to
this heritage is in a different state:

It seems to repeat the phrases of an age which expired
in producing them, and to do so without knowing it
For since they were minted by the great masters, the
deluge has changed the face of economic society and
has made them phrases and little more. 4

The old liberating ideas were carried forward without criti
cism into a new society, of which they became the dogmas:

Behind their political theory, behind the practical con
duct, which, as always, continues to express theory
long after it has been discredited in the world of
thought, lay the acceptance of absolute rights to prop-

234 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

erty and to economic freedom as the unquestioned
centre of social organization. 5

Tawney's whole subsequent argument is a criticism of these
dogmas. He criticizes the 'absolute right to property' very
much in the terms of a Tory Romantic: the right to prop
erty is seen as conditional on the obligation to service. He
is, however, less sanguine that the urging of this principle
on the existing owners of property will produce any sensible
change. He is forced, rather, to the advocacy of socialism
as the only discernible means of restoring the idea and the
practice of social property. This principle is the basis of all
his most interesting recommendations.

His criticism of the other dogma, of economic freedom,
is also socialist in character. But he combines this with a
criticism of 'Industrialism' which must be seen, at this date,
as a radical criticism of much socialist policy. The criticism
of 'industrialism* rests heavily on RusMn and Arnold, and
much of it is in their exact terms. He sees industrialism as a
fetish: the exaggeration of one of the necessary means for
the maintenance of society into a central and overriding
end. He compares it with the Prussian fetish of militarism,
and continues:

Industrialism is no more the necessary characteristic of
an economically developed society than militarism is a
necessary characteristic of a nation which maintains
military forces. . . . The essence of industrialism . . .
is not any particular method of industry, but a par
ticular estimate of the importance of industry, which
results in it being thought the only thing that is im
portant at all, so that it is elevated from the subordi
nate place which it should occupy among human in
terests and activities into being the standard by which
all other interests and activities are judged. 6

The Acquisitive Society was written in 1921, and it is a
measure of its insight (as well as a symptom of that 'practi
cal conduct which continues to express theory long after it
has been discredited in the world of thought') that the ex
amples which Tawney gives of this 'perversion' should be

R. H. TAWNEY #35

so startlingly relevant, a full generation later, to the practice
of both our major political parties:

When a Cabinet Minister declares that the greatness
of this country depends upon the volume of its exports,
so that France, which exports comparatively little, and
Elizabethan England, which exported next to nothing,
are presumably to be pitied as altogether inferior civ
ilizations, that is Industrialism. It is the confusion of
one minor department of Me with the whole of life.
. . . When the Press clamours that the one thing
needed to make this island an Arcadia is productivity,
and more productivity, and yet more productivity,
that is Industrialism. It is the confusion of means with
ends. 7

Tawney's debt to Arnold, in this, will have been noted; as
also, in another example, his debt to RusMn:

So to those who clamour, as many now do, 'Produce!
Produce!' one simple question may be addressed;
'Produce what?* Food, clothing, house-room, art,
knowledge? By all means! But if the nation is scantily
furnished with these things had it not better stop pro
ducing a good many others which fill shop windows
in Regent Street? . . . What can be more childish
than to urge the necessity that productive power
should be increased, if part of the productive power
which exists already is misapplied? 8

In part, this observation rests on the traditional appeal for
the rejection of 'illth* which RusMn and Morris would have
approved. But Tawney takes the argument an important
stage further. It is not only the lack of purpose in society
which distorts human effort; it is also the existence and the
approval of inequality. It was in 1929 that Tawney ad
dressed himself fully to this latter problem, in the lectures
that were published as Equality.

Here, once again, Tawney's starting point is Arnold, but
as before he expands a moral observation into a detailed
and practical argument, Tawney argues, basically, from the
existence of economic crisis, and concludes that efforts to

CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

overcome this crisis in any lasting way are consistently
brought to nothing by the fact of social inequality. He
draws attention to the surprise of foreign observers at the
emphasis on class in England, and continues:

Here are these people, they (the observers) say, who,
more than any other nation, need a common culture,
for, more than any other, they depend on an economic
system which at every turn involves mutual under
standing and continuous cooperation, and who, more
than any other, possess, as a result of their history,
the materials by which such a common culture might
be inspired. And, so far from desiring it, there is noth
ing, it seems, which they desire less. 9

The foundations of a common culture, he insists, are eco
nomic; their condition is a large measure of equality. But to
raise the question of equality in England is to encounter at
once 'doleful voices and rashings to and fro'. The questioner
wiH be told at once not only that the doctrine is poisonous,
wicked and impracticable, but that in any case it is a 'sci
entific impossibility*. Tawney goes on:

It is obvious that the word 'Equality' possesses more
than one meaning, and that the controversies sur
rounding it arise partly, at least, because the same
term is employed with different connotations. ... On
the one hand, it may affirm that men are, on the whole,
very similar in their natural endowments of character
and intelligence. On the other hand, it may assert
that, while they differ profoundly as individuals in ca
pacity and character, they are equally entitled as hu
man beings to consideration and respect. ... If made
in the first sense, the assertion of human equality is
clearly untenable. . . . The acceptance of that conclu
sion, nevertheless, makes a somewhat smaller breach
in equalitarian doctrines than is sometimes supposed,
for such doctrines have rarely been based on a denial
of it. ... When observers from the dominions, or from
foreign countries, are struck by inequality as one of the
special and outstanding characteristics of English so-

R. H. TAWNEY 237

cial life, they do not mean that in other countries dif
ferences of personal quality are less important than in

England. They mean, on the contrary, that they are
more important, and that in England they tend to be
obscured or obliterated behind differences of property
and income, and the whole elaborate facade of a so
ciety that, compared with their own, seems stratified
and hierarchical. 10

Yet still, in England, the debate on equality is normally

continued as if the proposition were absolute equality of
character and ability. In fact, however:

the equality which all these thinkers emphasize as de
sirable is not equality of capacity or attainment, but
of circumstances, and institutions, and manner of Me.
The inequality which they deplore is not inequality of
personal gifts, but of the social and economic environ
ment . . . Their view ... is that, because men are
men, social institutions property rights, and the or
ganization of industry, and the system of public health
and education should be planned, as far as is pos
sible, to emphasize and strengthen, not the class dif
ferences which divide, but the common humanity
which unites, them. 11

Tawney adds two further arguments. First, that equality is
not to be rejected on the grounds that human beings differ
in their needs: 'equality of provision is not identity of pro
vision*. Second (and in my view of the greatest impor
tance), that

in order to justify inequalities of circumstance or op
portunity by reference to differences of personal qual
ity, it is necessary ... to show that the differences in
question are relevant to the inequalities. 12

It is not an argument against women's suffrage that women
are physically weaker than men, nor an argument for slavery
that men differ in intelligence. Further, it is not an argu
ment for economic inequality that 'every mother knows her
children are not equal*: it has then to be asked 'whether it

238 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

is the habit of mothers to lavish care on the strong and
neglect the delicate'. Nor, finally, is it an argument for in
equality that it is supported by 'economic laws'; these laws'
are relative to circumstances and institutions, and these are
determined by 'the values, preferences, interests and ideals
which rule at any moment in a given society'.

Much of the remainder of Equality is devoted to advo
cacy of Tawney's specific remedies; in particular, an exten
sion of the social services, and the conversion of industry
to a social function with the status and standards of a pro
fession. It is difficult to disagree with the humanity of his
arguments, but it is difficult also not to feel, as of much of
the writing in this tradition, that although it recognizes
what Tawney calls 'the lion in the path' it yet hopes that
the path can be followed to the end by converting both
traveller and lion to a common humanity. For Tawney, one
of the noblest men of his generation, the attitude is evi
dently habitual The inequality and the avoidable suffering
of contemporary society are subject, 'while men are men',
to a moral choice; when the choice has been made, it is
then only a matter of deliberate organization and collective
effort. 'When the false gods depart', as he says in another
metaphor, 'there is some hope, at least, of the arrival of the
true/ Tawney, above all, is a patient exorcizer; he meets the
false gods with irony, and appeals, meanwhile, over their
heads to the congregation, in the accents of a confident hu
manism. Yet the irony is, at times, disquieting, although it
accounts for much of the charm of his writing:

A nation is not civilized because a handful of its mem
bers are successful in acquiring large sums of money
and in persuading their fellows that a catastrophe
will occur if they do not acquire it, any more than
Dahomey was civilized because its king had a golden
stool and an army of slaves, or Judea because Solomon
possessed a thousand wives and imported apes and
peacocks, and surrounded the worship of Moloch and
Ashtaroth with an impressive ritual. 10

This manner is very characteristic of his general works, and
produces at times the sense of an uneasy combination be-

R. H. TAWNEY

tween argument and filigree. The irony, one suspects, is
defensive, as it was with Arnold, from whom in essentials

it derives. It is not merely a literary device for good-
humoured acceptance, which seems incumbent on some
Englishmen when they feel they are going against the grain
of their society. It is also, one cannot help feeling, a device
for lowering the tension when, however, the tension is nec
essary. It is a particular kind of estimate of the opposition
to be expected, and it is, of course, in essentials, an under
estimate. No believer in any god will be affected by the
smiling insinuation of a missionary that the god's real name
is Mumbo- Jumbo; he is altogether more likely merely to
return the compliment. Tawney's manner before the high
priests is uneasy. He seems to feel, as Arnold felt, that they
are his kind of men, and will understand his language: if
they do not, he has only to say it again. The spectacle con
trasts uneasily and unfavourably with Tawney's manner in
direct address beyond them: the steady exposition of his
argument that contemporary society will move merely from
one economic crisis to another unless it changes both its
values and the system which embodies them. The manner
of exposition occupies, fortunately, the bulk of his work.

The discussion of 'Equality and Culture', which is ob
viously very important, is conducted in both moods, but
we can, fairly, omit the apes and peacocks. His position is
at the outset the traditional one:

What matters to a society is less what it owns than
what it is and how it uses its possessions. It is civilized
in so far as its conduct is guided by a just appreciation
of spiritual ends, in so far as it uses its material re
sources to promote the dignity and refinement of the
individual human beings who compose it. 14

Thus far, Tawney is saying what Coleridge or RusMn would
approve. He continues, however:

Violent contrasts of wealth and power, and an undis-
criminating devotion to institutions by which such con
trasts are maintained and heightened, do not promote
the attainment of such ends, but thwart it. 15

24O CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

The new recognition Is just, and of Ms period. Tawney is
concerned less with the defence of culture against indus
trialism than with the making of a 'common culture'. The
main objection to this is the representative objection of

Clive Bell: that culture depends on standards, and stand
ards on a cultivated minority; a cultivated minority is not
compatible with the pursuit of equality, which would
merely be a levelling-down to mediocrity.

Tawney's answer to this objection is interesting, although
it is difficult to feel that he meets the point about levelling
down' with more than a sidetracking device of argument. It
is not really relevant to point out that England has already
'a. dead-level of law and order' and that this is generally
approved. He observes, justly:

Not all the ghosts which clothe themselves in meta
phors are equally substantial, and whether a level is
regrettable or not depends, after all, upon what is
levelled. 16

The argument, however, is about the levelling of standards,
and on this, essentially, Tawney has nothing to say.

The essence of his reply is more general. The mainte
nance of economic inequality, he argues, tends to 'pervert
what Mr Bell calls the sense of values':

to cause men, in the strong language of the Old Testa
ment, 'to go a-whoring after strange gods', which
means, in the circumstances of today, staring upwards,
eyes goggling and mouths agape, at the antics of a
third-rate Elysium, and tormenting their unhappy
souls, or what, in such conditions, is left of them, with
the hope of wriggling into it. 17

This collateral argument, that economic inequality while
possibly maintaining a genuinely cultivated minority main
tains also and more prominently 'sham criteria of eminence',
is valid. We can agree also with the point he repeats from
Arnold: experience does not suggest that

in modern England, at any rate, the plutocracy, with
its devotion to the maxim, Privatim opulentia, publice
egestas, is, in any special sense, the guardian of such

R. H. TAWNEY 24!

activities (the labours of artist or student), or that, to
speak with moderation, it is noticeably more eager
than the mass of the population to spend liberally on
art, or education, or the things ol the spirit. 18

Yet, equally, it would be a forcible observation, as it was
in Arnold, to reverse the proposition and ask whether the
'mass' is a probable guardian. We can say that the argu
ment about culture is not in itself an argument for economic
inequality, but the recommendation of a common culture
requires something more than a tu quoque.

If we look, finally, at Tawney's central statement on cul
ture, we shall observe the same kind of difficulty. He writes:

It is true that excellence is impossible in the absence of
severe and exacting standards of attainment and ap
preciation. ... In order, however, to escape from one
illusion, it ought not to be necessary to embrace an
other. If civilization is not the product of the kitchen
garden, neither is it an exotic to be grown in a hot
house. . . . Culture may be fastidious but fastidious
ness is not culture. . . . Culture is not an assortment
of aesthetic sugar-plums for fastidious palates, but an
energy of the soul. . . . When it feeds on itself, in
stead of drawing nourishment from the common life
of mankind, it ceases to grow, and, when it ceases to
grow, it ceases to live. In order that it may be, not
merely an interesting museum specimen, but an active
principle of intelligence and refinement, by which vul
garities are checked and crudities corrected, it is nec
essary, not only to preserve intact existing standards
of excellence, and to diffuse their influence, but to
broaden and enrich them by contact with an ever-
widening range of emotional experiences and intellec
tual interests. The association of culture with a limited
class, which is enabled by its wealth to carry the art of
living to a high level of perfection, may achieve the
first, but it cannot, by itself, achieve the second. It
may refine, or appear to refine, some sections of a com
munity, but it coarsens others, and smites, in the end,
with a blight of sterility, even refinement itself. It may

CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

preserve culture, but it cannot extend it; and, in the
long run, it is only by its extension that, in the condi
tions of today, it is likely to be preserved. 19

As a reply to the case for minority culture this is reasonable.
Not that its language is wholly admirable: the sugar-plums
belong with the apes and peacocks, while Tiothouse', 'mu
seum specimen', 'sterility*, and so on, have become the
nodes of a familiar kind of journalism. The uncertainty of
the language marks, in fact, an important evasion of feel
ing. The case for extension (the entirely appropriate word)
is strong; the dangers of Imitation are real and present. But
to think of the problem as one of 'opening the museums' or
of putting the specimens in the market-place is to capitulate
to a very meagre idea of culture. Tawney's position is both
normal and humane. But there is an unresolved contradic
tion, which phrases about broadening and enriching merely
blur, between the recognition that a culture must grow
and the hope that 'existing standards of excellence' may be
preserved intact. It is a contradiction which, among others,
the defenders of inequality will be quick to exploit. The
question that has to be faced, if we may put it for a mo
ment in one of Tawney's analogies, is whether the known
gold will be more widely spread, or whether, in fact, there
will be a change of currency. If the social and economic
changes which Tawney recommends are in fact effected, it
is the latter, the change of currency, which can reasonably
be expected. For those to whom this is a feared disaster,
Tawney's reassurances are not likely to be convincing. For
others, impressed by Tawney's consistent humanity and
convinced of the need for radical social change, the analy
sis, while decent, is likely to seem lacking in depth. Tawney
is the last important voice in that tradition which has sought
to humanize the modem system of society on its own best
terms. This is the mark both of his achievement and his
limitations. We may properly end, however, by stressing the
achievement, for Tawney is one of the very few thinkers in
this century who, in the qualities of reverence, dedication
and courage, ranks with his nineteenth-century prede
cessors.

CHAPTER III

T. S. ELIOT

WE can say of Eliot what Mil said of Coleridge, that an
'enlightened Radical or Liberal' ought 'to rejoice over such
a Conservative*. 1 We can do this even if, in the wisdom of
our generation, we feel 'enlightened' as a kind of insult. For
it is not only that, as Mil said, 'even if a Conservative phi*
losophy were an absurdity, it is wel calculated to drive out
a hundred absurdities worse than itself, or that such a
thinker is 'the natural means of rescuing from oblivion
truths which Tories have forgotten, and which the prevail
ing schools of Liberalism never knew*. 2 It is also that, if
Eliot is read with attention, he is seen to have raised
questions which those who differ from him politicaly must
answer, or else retire from the field. In particular, in his dis
cussion of culture, he has carried the argument to an im
portant new stage, and one on which the rehearsal of old
pieces will be merely tedious.

In writing The Idea of a Christian Society, Eliot adopts
an emphasis of Coleridge:

In using the term "Idea 3 of a Christian Society I do not
mean primarily a concept derived from the study of
any societies which we may choose to call Christian:
I mean something that can only be found in an un
derstanding of the end to which a Christian Society,
to deserve the name, must be directed. . . . My con
cern . . . will . . . be . . . with the question, what
if any is the Idea* of the society in which we live? to
what end is it arranged? 3

From this he goes on to criticize a formidable public plati
tude:

The current terms in which we describe our society,
the contrasts with other societies by which we o the
Western Democracies* eulogize it, only operate to de-

244 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

ceive and stupefy us. To speak o ourselves as a Chris
tian society, in contrast to that of Germany (1939)
or Russia, is an abuse of terms. We mean only that we
have a society in which no one is penalized for the
formal profession of Christianity; but we conceal from
ourselves tie unpleasant knowledge of the real values
by which we live. 4

The effect of this observation resembles very closely the
effect of Coleridge's observations on the idea of a National
Church. Under such precision, the ^hundred absurdities'
may be seen for what they are.

The observation is characteristic of the tone of the whole
work. Eliot's enquiry springs from a crisis of feeling in Sep
tember 1938:

It was not a disturbance of the understanding: the
events themselves were not surprising. Nor, as became
increasingly evident, was our distress due merely to
disagreement with the policy and behaviour of the
moment. The feeling which was new and unexpected
was a feeling of humiliation, which seemed to demand
an act of personal contrition, of humility, repentance
and amendment; what had happened was something
in which one was deeply implicated and responsible. It
was not, I repeat, a criticism of the government, but
a doubt of the validity of a civilization. . . . Was our
society, which had always been so assured of its su
periority and rectitude, so confident of its unexamined
premisses, assembled round anything more permanent
than a congeries of banks, insurance companies and
industries, and had it any beliefs more essential than
a belief in compound interest and the maintenance of
dividends? 5

The manner of this question belongs, quite evidently, to the
tradition. And the feelings of humiliation and implication
remind one of earlier feelings in a different crisis: the re
action to Chartism in the 18308 and 1840$.

A Christian community, Eliot argues, is one In which
there is a unified religious-social code of behaviour*. 6 A

T. S. ELIOT 245

Christian organization of society would be one In which the
natural end of man virtue and well-being in community-
is acknowledged for all, and the supernatural end-beati
tude for those who have the eyes to see if. 7 As things are,
however,

a great deal of the machinery of modern life is merely
a sanction for un-Christian aims ... it is not only
hostile to the conscious pursuit of the Christian life in
the world by the few, but to the maintenance of any
Christian society of the world. 8

A Christian society will not be realized merely by a change
of this 'machinery', yet any contemplation of it must lead to

such problems as the hypertrophy of the motive of
Profit into a social ideal, the distinction between the
use of natural resources and their exploitation, the use
of labour and its exploitation, the advantages unfairly
accruing to the trader in contrast to the primary pro
ducer, the misdirection of the financial machine, the
iniquity of usury, and other features of a commercial
ized society which must be scrutinized on Christian
principles. . . . We are being made aware that the
organization of society on the principle of private
profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to
the deformation of humanity by unregulated industri
alism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and
that a good deal of our material progress is a progress
for which succeeding generations may have to pay
dearly.

Industrialism, when it is unregulated, tends to create not a
society but a mob. The religious-social complex on which a
Christian organization of society may be built is thus weak
ened or destroyed:

In an industrialized society like that of England, I am
surprised that the people retains as much Christianity
as it does. . . . In its religious organization, we may
say that Christendom has remained fixed at the stage
of development suitable to a simple agricultural and

346 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

piscatorial society, and that modern material organiza
tionor if 'organization* sounds too complimentary,
we will say 'complication' has produced a world
for which Christian social forms are imperfectly
adapted. 10

In such a state of disintegration, or unbalance, material or
physical improvement can be no more than secondary:

A mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well
clothed, well housed, and well disciplined. 11

From Liberalism we are likely to inherit only the fruits of
its disorder, while Democracy, in terms of which we tend
to define our social ends, means too many things to mean
anything at which a society can direct its whole life. In this
criticism of Liberalism and Democracy, Eliot is essentially
repeating Carlyle: that both are movements away from
something, and that they may either arrive at something
very different from what was intended, or else, in social
terms, arrive at nothing positive at all.

The Idea of a Christian Society, in its general effect,
serves rather to distinguish a Christian idea of society from
other ideas with which it has become entangled, or by
which it is evidently denied, than to formulate anything in
the nature of a programme. Eliot's business is to confess an
attitude, and it is an essential part of this attitude that the
formulation of programmes cannot have priority. He ob
serves, for instance, in a passage which leads directly to
the kind of enquiry undertaken in Notes towards the Defini
tion of Culture:

You cannot, in any scheme for the reformation of so
ciety, aim directly at a condition in which the arts will
flourish: these activities are probably by-products for
which we cannot deliberately arrange the conditions.
On the other hand, their decay may always be taken as
a symptom of some social ailment to be investigated. 12

And he goes on to observe

the steady Influence which operates silently in any
mass society organized for profit, for the depression of

T. S. ELIOT 247

standards of art and culture. The increasing organiza
tion of advertisement and propaganda or the influ
encing of masses of men by any means except through
their intelligence is all against them. The economic
system is against them; the chaos of ideals and confu
sion of thought in our large scale mass education is
against them; and against them also is the disappear
ance of any class of people who recognize public and
private responsibility of patronage of the best that is
made and written. 13

Yet even against this, and for the reason given, Eliot offers
nothing that can be called, in ordinary terms, a proposal. It
is from this point, rather, that he begins his penetrating re-
examination of the idea of culture in his next book. In Notes
towards the Definition of Culture, Eliot's essential conserva
tism is very much more evident; but I think we can assume,
and many who now look to him might remember, that Ms
more recent enquiry was only undertaken from the stand
point of that far-reaching criticism of contemporary society
and contemporary social philosophy which The Idea of a
Christian Society so outspokenly embodies.

The Notes towards the Definition of Culture is a difficult
work to assess. Although short, it differs very widely within
itself both in method and in seriousness. At times, partic
ularly in the Introduction and in the Notes on Education,
the method is little more than an exposure of sentences
which Eliot has found absurd or offensive, together with a
brief running commentary which suddenly turns and as
sumes the status of argument. These parts of the book are
the growling innuendoes of the correspondence columns
rather than the prose of thought. The central chapters are
very much more serious, and in parts of them there is that
brilliance and nervous energy of definition which distin
guishes Eliot's literary criticism. There is, however, an im
portant difference from the literary criticism, of which a
principal virtue was always the specificity, not only of defi
nition, but of illustration. In these essays, on the other hand,
the usefulness of the definitions is always in danger of
breaking down because Eliot is unwilling or unable to il-

#48 COHTimE AJSTD SOCIETY 1 780-1950

lustrate. He makes, in the course of his argument, a number

of important generalizations of a historical kind; but these
are, at best, arbitrary, for there is hardly ever any attempt
to demonstrate them. As a brief instance, this can be cited:

You cannot expect to have all stages of development
at once ... a civilization cannot simultaneously pro
duce great folk poetry at one cultural level and Para
dise Lost at another. 14

The general point is clearly very important, and it is built
into much of the subsequent theory. Yet, historically, one
wants very much more discussion, with actual examples,
before one can reasonably decide whether it is true. The
example he gives is indeed almost calculated to raise these
doubts; because the fact, for instance, of the co-existence,
within a generation, of Paradise Lost and The Pilgrim's
Progress is an obvious, and obviously difficult, case for any
one who would think about levels of culture. It is not that
one can be sure that Eliot is wrong, but that one can be
even less sure that he is right. The substance of his general
arguments is tentative and incidental, yet the manner in
which they are communicated is often dogmatic to the
point of insolence. For example, in his Introduction he
writes:

What I try to say is this: here are what I believe to be

essential conditions for the growth and for the survival
of culture. 15

This is a fair claim, and the tone corresponds to what is in
fact offered. But the sentence is at once followed by this:

If they conflict with any passionate faith of the reader

if, for instance, he finds it shocking that culture and
equaMtarianism should conflict, if it seems monstrous
to him that anyone should have 'advantages of birth*
I do not ask him to change his faith, I merely ask
him to stop paying lip-service to culture. 16

From try to say and what I believe to be there is an abrupt
movement to something very different: the assertion,
backed by the emotive devices of passionate, shocking,

T. S. ELIOT #49

monstrous and lip-service, that if we do not agree with
Eliot's conditions we stand self -convicted of Indifference to
culture. This, to say the least, is not proved; and in this
jump from the academy to the correspondence column,
which Eliot is far too able and experienced a writer not to
know that he is making, there is evidence of other impulses
behind this work than the patient effort towards definition;
evidence, one might say, of the common determination to
rationalize one's prejudices. Mr LasM, Mr Dent, Earl Atflee
and the others in the pillory could hardly be blamed, at
such moments, if they looked for Eliot not in the direction
of the courtroom but alongside them, waiting to be pelted.

The most important disadvantage which has followed
from these faults in the book is that they have allowed it
to be plausibly dismissed by those of us whose prejudices
are different, while its points of real importance are evaded.
The major importance of the book, in my view, lies in two
of its discussions: first, its adoption of the meaning of cul
ture as 'a whole way of life*, and the subsequent consider
ation of what we mean by levels' of culture within it; sec
ond, its effort to distinguish between 'ilite* and 'class', and
its penetrating criticism of the theories of an *6Iite'. It is an
almost physical relief to reach these discussions after the
foregoing irritability; yet they seem to have been little
considered.

The sense of 'culture' as *a whole way of life' has been
most marked in twentieth-century anthropology and soci
ology, and Eliot, like the rest of us, has been at least casu
ally influenced by these disciplines. The sense depends, in
fact, on the literary tradition. The development of social
anthropology has tended to inherit and substantiate the
ways of looking at a society and a common life which had
earlier been wrought out from general experience of indus
trialism. The emphasis on "a whole way of life' is continuous
from Coleridge and Carlyle, but what was a personal as
sertion of value has become a general intellectual method.
There have been two main results in ordinary thinking.
First, we have learned something new about change: not
only that it need not terrify us, since alternative institutions
and emphases of energy have been shown to be practicable

250 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

and satisfying; but also that it cannot be piecemeal-one
element of a complex system can hardly be changed with
out seriously affecting the whole. Second (and perhaps of
more doubtful value), we have been given new illustrations
of an alternative way of life. In common thinking, the me
diaeval town and the eighteenth-century village have been
replaced, as examples, by various kinds of recent simple
societies. These can reassure us that the version of lif e which
industrialism has forced on us is neither universal nor per
manent, but can also become a kind of weakening luxury,
if they lead us to suppose that we have the 'whole arc' of
human possibilities to choose from, in life as in the docu
ments. The alternatives and variations which matter are
those which can become practical in our own culture; the
discipline, rightly emphasized, drives us back to look at
these within our own complex, rather than outwards to
other pkces and other times.

Eliot's emphasis of culture as a whole way of Me is useful
and significant It is also significant that, having taken the
emphasis, he plays with it For example:

Culture . . . includes all the characteristic activities
and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta,
Cowes, the twelfth of August, a cup final, the dog
races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale
cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in
vinegar, runeteenth-century Gothic churches, and the
music of Elgar. 17

This pleasant miscellany is evidently narrower in kind than
the general description which precedes it. The 'characteris
tic activities and interests' would also include steeimaking,
touring in motor-cars, mixed fanning, the Stock Exchange,
coalmining and London Transport. Any list would be in
complete, but Eliot's categories are sport, food and a little
art a characteristic observation of English leisure. There
is a suggestion that he does not fully accept the sense of *a
whole way of life', but in this illustration translates the older
specialized sense of 'culture* (arts, philosophy) into 'popu
lar culture' (sport, food and the Gothic churches). It is
evident elsewhere in the book that at times he reverts to the

T, S. ELIOT 251

specialized sense. He says that it is possible to conceive a
future period which 'will have no culture', 18 by which he
can surely only mean 'will have nothing recognizable as
culture, in the sense of a religion, arts, learning'; for if one
applies to the sentence the sense of *a whole way of life', it
amounts to saying that there could be a period in which
there was no common life, at any level. There is often, in
the book, this sense of a sliding of definitions,
Eliot distinguishes three senses of culture:

according to whether we have in mind the develop
ment of an individual, of a group or class, or of a
whole society. ^

He observes that 'men of letters and moralists* have usually
discussed the first two senses, and especially the first, with
out relation to the third. This is hardly true of, say, Cole
ridge, Carlyle, RusMn and Morris, but it is probably true,
or partly true, of Arnold, of whom he appears mainly to be
thinking, and whom he quotes by name. The importance
of the formulation, however, is not in this, but in the two
deductions from it: first, that:

a good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we re
frained from setting before the group, what can be the
aim only of the individual; and before society as a
whole, what can be the aim only of a group; 20

and, second, that:

the culture of the individual cannot be isolated from
that of the group, and ... the culture of the group
cannot be abstracted from that of the whole society;
. . . our notion of 'perfection' must take all three senses
of 'culture' into account at once. 21

These conclusions have, first, an important negative value.
They rule out, if they are accepted, any attempt to make
the individual's search for perfection into a plausible social
ideal. They rule out also those extreme forms of the idea of
a 'minority culture' in which it is supposed that the culture
of a group can be maintained on its own terms, and within
its own orbit, without reference to the progress of the cul-

#52 CULTURE AOTS SOCIETY

tare of the whole society of which the group is a part. As
ideas, these that are rejected seem evidently imperfect; yet,
in terms of feeling, they are curiously persistent, and much
contemporary effort seems in fact to be based upon them.
It is essentiaEy and ideally the function of a conservative
thinker to show their inadequacy.

But the vital use of these conclusions, for Eliot, lies in
the sentence: 4 a good deal of confusion could be avoided,
if we refrained from setting . . . before society as a whole,
what can be the aim only of a group'. This observation at
once initiates and supports his whole theory of class, in this
way:

Among the more primitive societies, the higher types
exhibit more marked differentiations of function
amongst their members than the lower types. At a
higher stage still, we find that some functions are more
honoured than others, and this division promotes the
development of classes, in which higher honour and
higher privilege are accorded, not merely to the person
as functionary but as member of the class. And the
ckss itself possesses a function, that of maintaining
that part of the total culture of the society which
pertains to that class. We have to try to keep in mind,
that in a healthy society this maintenance of a particu
lar level of culture is to the benefit, not merely of the
class which maintains it, but of the society as a whole.
Awareness of this fact will prevent us from supposing
that the culture of a ^higher* class is something super
fluous to society as a whole, or to the majority, and
from supposing that it is something which ought to be
shared equally by all other classes. 22

This account, when it is set together with the insistence that
culture is *a whole way of Me*, forms the basis of the two
important discussions to which I have referred: that of
levels* of culture, and that of the nature of 'class* and its
distinction from *6Iite*. It is perhaps worth remarking, even
at this stage, that Eliot's account of the development of
classes is not, when historically viewed, such as will give us
complete confidence in his subsequent reasoning. The slide

T. S. ELIOT

from the differentiation of function in primitive society to
what we call, and know as, classes, is adroitly managed,

but it leaves out too much. In particular, the exclusion of
the economic factorof the tendency of function to turn
into property leaves the view of ckss narrow and mislead
ing. Eliot seems always to have in mind, as the normal
scheme of his thinking, a society which is at once more
stable and more simple than any to which his discussion
is likely to be relevant. The emergence of such 'functional'
groups as the merchants, and then the industrial capitalists,
and then the financiers has altered, in a very obvious way,
the scheme which Eliot uses. For it is clear that it is possi
ble, and has indeed widely occurred, that function can be
come divorced from the property which, at one stage, it
created; and, further, that the maintenance of property, or,
in the narrower sense, of money, can become a new 'func
tion'. When this state of affairs has been complicated over
many generations by inheritance and accumulation, and,
further, has been radically penetrated and affected by the
" continual emergence of new economic functions, with thek
appropriate classes, it becomes misleading to equate class
and function, or even to posit any consistent relation be
tween them. It was 'the realization of this fact, in the con
fusion of the new industrial society, which led Eliot's prede
cessors in this tradition to demands for change. Coleridge,
Southey, Carlyle, Ruskfn and, in effect, Arnold, may be
seen to have been working, above all, in the attempt to
make 'class* into 'function', It was the absence of any con
sistent relation between class and function which was the
gravamen of their criticism of the new industrial society.
One thinks indeed, at times, of Eliot as the contemporary
of Burke, who was himself idealizing and simplifying his
actual society. Certainly, in this later work although not,
as we have seen, in The Idea of a Christian Socfety-he
seems guilty of the worst kind of abstraction and failure
to observe.

The discussion of levels* of culture is, however, less viti
ated by this failing than one would expect. In thinking of
culture as *a whole way of life* Eliot emphasizes that a large
part of a way of life is necessarily unconscious. A large part

254 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

of our common beliefs is our common behaviour, and this
is the main point of difference between the two meanings
of 'culture'. What we sometimes call "culture' a religion, a
moral code, a system of law, a body of work in the arts-
is to be seen as only a part the conscious part of that 'cul
ture' which is the whole way of Me. This, evidently, is an
illuminating way of thinking about culture, although the
difficulties which it at once exposes are severe. For, just as
we could not assume a correspondence between function
and ckss, so we can not assume a correspondence between
conscious culture and the whole way of life. If we think of
a simple, and stable, society, the correspondence is usually
evident; but where there is complication, and tension, and
change, the matter is no longer one of levels, a given per
centage of a uniform whole. The consciousness can be a
false consciousness, or partly false, as I think Eliot showed
in The Idea of a Christian Society. Where this is so, the
maintenance of that consciousness, which is often likely to
be to the Immediate interest of a particular class, is no
longer, in any positive sense, a function. We should be wise,
therefore, to distinguish between the general, theoretical
relation between conscious culture and a whole way of life,
and the actual relation or relations which may at any one
time exist in society. In theory, the metaphor of levels' may
be iluminating; in practice, because it derives from obser
vation not only of a culture but of a system of social classes,
and, further, because the degree of conscious culture is so
easily confused with the degree of social privilege, it is
misleading.

It is evident, however, that in any conceivable society,
the degrees of consciousness of even a common culture will
widely vary. Eliot's emphasis on this is important to the
extent that it forces a revision of some of the simpler theses
of the democratic diffusion of culture. There are three points
here. First, it now seems evident that the idea of not a com
munity but an equality of culture a uniform culture evenly
spread is essentially a product of the primitivism (often
expressed as mediaevalism) which was so important a re
sponse to the harsh complexities of the new industrial so
ciety. Such an idea ignores the necessary complexity of any

T. S. ELIOT 255

community winch employs developed industrial and scien
tific techniques; and the longing for identity of situation
and feeling, which exerts so powerful an emotional appeal
in such writers as Morris, is merely a form of the regressive
longing for a simpler, non-industrial society. In any form of
society towards which we are likely to move, it now seems
clear that there must be, not a simple equality (In the sense
of identity) of culture; but rather a very complex system
of specialized developments the whole of which will form
the whole culture, but which will not be available, or con
scious, as a whole, to any individual or group living within
it. (This complex system has, of course, no necessary rela
tion to a system of social classes based on economic dis
crimination.) Where this is realized, the idea of equal dif
fusion is commonly transferred to a few selected elements
of the culture, usually the arts. It is certain, I think, that
one can imagine a society in which the practice and en
joyment of the arts would be very much more widely dif
fused. But there are dangers, both to the arts and to the
whole culture, if the diffusion of this abstracted part of the
culture is planned and considered as a separate operation.
One aspect of these dangers may be seen in the second
point: that ideas of the diffusion of culture have normally
been dominative in character, on behalf of the particular
and finished ideal of an existing ckss. This, which I would
call the Fabian tone in culture, is seen most clearly in an
ideal which has been largely built into our educational sys
tem, of leading the unenlightened to the particular kind of
light which the leaders find satisfactory for themselves. A
particular land of work is to be extended to more persons,
although, as a significant tiling, it exists as a whole in the
situation in which it was produced. The dominative element
appears in the conviction that the product will not need
to be changed, that criticism is merely the residue of mis
understanding, and, finally, that the whole operation can
be carried out, and the product widely extended, without
radically changing the general situation. This may be sum
marized as the belief that a culture (in the specialized
sense) can be widely extended without changing the cul-

-256 CU1LTUBE AKD SOCIETY

tare (in the sense of *a whole way of life') within which it
has existed.

Eliot's arguments help us to see the limitations of these
ideas, although he hardly presses the discussion home.
What he develops has more relevance to the third point,
which follows from the second, that the specialized culture
cannot be extended without being changed. His words for
'change' are, of course, 'adulteration' and "cheapening'; and
we must grant him, for his own purposes, his own valua
tions. Yet, while we may have other valuations, and see
Variation* and 'enrichment* as at least equal possibilities
with those which Eliot foresees, his emphasis that any ex
tension involves change is welcome. Nothing is to be gained
by supposing that the values of one way of life can be
transferred, unchanged, to another; nor is it very realistic
to suppose that a conscious selection of the values can be
made-the bad to be rejected and the good to be transferred.
Eliot is right in insisting that the thought about culture
which has led to these positions is confused and shallow.

Eliot, from his insistence on culture as *a whole way of
life*, has valuably criticized the orthodox theories of the
diffusion of culture, and there is, as he sees it, only one
further obstacle to the acceptance of his general view. This
obstacle is the theory, primarily associated with Mannheim,
of the substitution of Elites for classes. Mannheim's argu
ment may be seen, fundamentally, as an epilogue to the
long nineteenth-century attempt to reidentify class with
function. This took the form, either of an attempt to revive
obsolete classes (as in Coleridge's idea of the clerisy) , or of
an appeal to existing classes to resume their functions
(Carlyle, Rusldn) , or of an attempt to form a new class, the
civilizing minority (Arnold) . Mannheim, quite rightly, real
izes that these attempts have largely failed. Further, he re
jects the idea of classes based on birth or money, and, em-
pnasizing the necessary specialization and complexity of
modem society, proposes to substitute for the old classes the
new Elites, whose basis is neither birth nor money, but
achievement. In practice, one can see our own society as a
mixture of the old ideas of class and the new ideas of an
6Iite: a mixed economy, if one may put it in that way. The

T. S. ELIOT #57

movement towards acceptance of the idea of elites has, of

course, been powerfully assisted by the doctrines of oppor
tunity in education and of the competitive evaluation of

merit. The degree of necessary specialization, and the im
perative requirement for quality in it, have also exerted a
strong and practical pressure.

Eliot's objections to Mannheim's theory can be summa
rized in one of his sentences: that 'it posits an atomic view
of society*. 23 The phrase will be recognized as belonging to
the tradition: the opposite to atomic is organic, a word on
which (without more definition than is common) Eliot
largely depends. His instinct, in this, is right: the theory
of Elites is, essentially, only a refinement of social laissez-
faire. The doctrine of opportunity in education is a mere
silhouette of the doctrine of economic individualism, with
its emphasis on competition and 'getting-on'. The doctrine
of equal opportunity, which appears to qualify this, was
generous in its conception, but it is tied, in practice, to the
same social end. The definition of culture as *a whole way
of life* is vital at this point, for Eliot is quite right to point
out that to limit, or to attempt to limit, the transmission of
culture to a system of formal education is to limit a whole
way of life to certain specialisms. If this Bruited programme
is vigorously pressed, it is indeed difficult to see how it can
lead to anything but disintegration. What will happen in
practice, of course, when the programme is combined with
a doctrine of opportunity (as it now largely Is) is the
setting-up of a new Mnd of stratified society, and the crea
tion of new kinds of separation. Orthodoxy, in this matter,
is now so general and so confident that it is even difficult
to communicate one's meaning when one says that a strati
fied society, based on merit, is as objectionable in every hu
man term as a stratified society based on money or on birth.
As it has developed, within an inherited economic system,
the idea of such a society has been functionally authoritar
ian, and it has even (because of the illusion that its criteria
are more absolute than those of birth or money, and can
not be appealed against in the same way) a land of Utopian
sanction, which makes criticism difficult or impossible.

Eliot's objections to an 61ite society are, first, that its com-

258 CULTURE AKD SOCIETY

mon culture will be meagre, and, second, that the principle
of Elites requires a change of persons in each generation,
and that this change is bound to be effected without the
important guarantee of any continuity wider than the Elite's
own specialisms. The point rests again on the insistence
that culture is s a whole way of life*, rather than certain spe
cial skills. Eliot argues that while an 61ite may have more
of the necessary skills than a class, it will lack that wider
social continuity which a class guaranteed. Mannheim him
self has emphasized the importance of this continuity, but
the idea of the selection and reselection of Elites seems to
deny it, unless some new principle is introduced. Eliot's em
phasis is on the whole content of a culture the special skills
being contained, for their own health, within it. And cer
tainly there is a good deal of evidence, from many parts
of our educational and training systems, of the co-existence
of fine particular skills with mediocre general sKUs: a state
of affairs which has important effects, not only on the Elites,
but on the whole common way of life.

Eliot recognizes the need for 6Mtes, or rather for an Iite,
and argues that, to ensure general continuity, we must re
tain social classes, and in particular a governing social class,
with which the Site will overlap and constantly interact.
This is Eliot's fundamentally conservative conclusion, for it
is clear, when the abstractions are translated, that what he
recommends is substantially what now exists, socially. He
is, of course, led necessarily to condemn the pressure for a
classless society, and for a national educational system. He
believes, indeed, that these pressures have already distorted
the national life and the values which this life supports. It
is in respect of these recommendations (not always reached
by the same paths) that lie now commands considerable
attention and support.

I have already indicated that I believe his criticism of
certain orthodox ideas of 'culture' to be valuable, and I
think that he has left the ordinary social-democratic case
without many relevant answers. As a conservative thinker,
he has succeeded in exposing the limitations of an orthodox
liberalism' which has been all too generally and too com
placently accepted. Where I find myself differing from him

T. S. ELIOT 559

(and I differ radically) is not in the main in his critique of

this liberalism'; it is rather in the present implications of
considering culture as *a whole way of life*. It seems to me
that Ms theoretical persistence in this view is matched only
by his practical refusal to observe (a refusal which was less
evident, at certain points, in The Idea of a Christian So-
ciety) . For what is quite clear in the new conservatism (and
this makes it very different from, and much inferior to, the
conservatism of a Coleridge or a Burke) is that a genuine
theoretical objection to the principle and the effects of an
'atomized', individualist society is combined, and has to be
combined, with adherence to the principles of an economic
system which is based on just this 'atomized', individualist
view. The 'free economy* which is the central tenet of con
temporary conservatism not only contradicts the social prin
ciples which Eliot advances (if it were only this one could
say merely that he is an unorthodox conservative) , but also,
and this is the real confusion, is the only available method
of ordering society to the maintenance of those interests and
institutions on which Eliot believes his values to depend.
Against the actual and powerful programme for the main
tenance of social classes, and against the industrial capital
ism which actually maintains the human divisions that he
endorses-, the occasional observation, however deeply felt,
on the immorality of exploitation or usury seems, indeed,
a feeble velleity. If culture were only a specialized product,
it might be afforded, in a kind of reserved area, away from
the actual drives of contemporary society. But if it is, as
Eliot insists it must be, *a whole way of life*, then the whole
system must be considered and judged as a whole. The in
sistence, in principle, is on wholeness; the practice, in effect,
is fragmentary. The triumphant liberalism of contemporary
society, which the practice of conservatives now so notably
sustains, will, as anyone who thinks about a 'whole way of
life' must realize, colour every traditional value. The prog
ress which Eliot deplores is in fact the product of all that is
actively left of the traditional society from which his values
were drawn. This is the root, surely, of that bleakness which
Eliot's social writings so powerfully convey. His standards
are too strict for him to turn, as other philosophical con-

&6O CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

servatives are turning, to the recovery of the bones of
Burke, the nostalgia for 1788. The bleakness, which is a
Jdnd of discipline, is wholly salutary: the fashionable *New
Conservatism' has been much too easy. If Eliot, when read
attentively, has the effect of checking the complacencies of
liberalism, he has also, when read critically, the effect of
making complacent conservatism impossible. The next step,
in thinking of these matters, must be in a different direc
tion, for Eliot has closed almost all the existing roads.

CHAPTER IV

TWO LITERARY CRITICS

i. I. A. Richards

IT is not too much to say that Principles of Literary Criti
cism, which I. A. Richards published in 1924, contained a
programme o critical work for a generation. One is sur
prised, on re-reading the book, to see how certain para
graphs in it have been expanded into whole volumes,
usually by other writers. Richards himself has followed up
only a part of what is there indicated: his later work is al
most wholly a study o language and communication, in
which throughout he has been a pioneer. But the "Principles,
and the shorter Science and Poetrn, published in 1926,
offer and depend upon a particular idea of culture which
is essentially a renewed definition of the importance of art
to civilization.

The critical revolt of the 19203 has been described as a
revolt against Romantic theory. Yet it is less this than a
revolt against something nearer and more oppressive: not
Romantic theory itself but one of its specialized conse
quences, Aesthetic theory. The isolation of aesthetic experi
ence, which had been evident in England between Pater
and Clive Bel, and which by the 'twenties had become a
kind of orthodoxy, was attacked along several different
lines. From Eliot came the re-emphasis of tradition and
faith; from Leavis a rediscovery of the breadth of general
emphasis which Arnold had given to culture; from the
Marxists the application of a new total interpretation of so
ciety. From Richards, if we view Ms work as a whole, the
theoretical attack came through the social facts of language
and communication. But the judgement on which this at
tack was founded is (as in Leavis, and with a similar de
pendence on Arnold) a matter of the whole culture:

Human conditions and possibilities have altered more
in a hundred years than they had in the previous ten

262, CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

thousand, and the next fifty may overwhelm us, unless
we can devise a more adaptable morality. . , . We

pass as a rule from a chaotic to a better organized
state by ways which we know nothing about. Typi
cally through the influence of other minds. Literature
and the arts are the chief means by which these influ
ences are diffused. It should be unnecessary to insist
upon the degree to which high civilization, in other
words, free, varied and unwasteful Me, depends upon
them in a numerous society. 1

The word 'numerous* indicates Richards's diagnosis of one
of the major changes of condition:

With the increase of population the problem presented
by the gulf between what is preferred by the majority
and what is accepted as excellent by the most quali
fied opinion has become infinitely more serious and ap
pears likely to become threatening in the near future.
For many reasons standards are much more in need of
defence than they used to he. 2

The increase of population interacts with the other element
of change which Richards identifies: what he calls the
'neutralization of nature';

the transference from the Magical View of the world
to the scientific. . . . Science can tell us about man's
place in the universe and his chances. . . . But it can
not tell us what we are or what this world is; not be
cause these are in any sense insoluble questions, but
because they are not questions at all. And if science
cannot answer these pseudo-questions no more can
philosophy or religion. So that all the varied answers
which have for ages been regarded as the keys of wis
dom are dissolving together. The result is a biologi
cal crisis which is not likely to be decided without
trouble. 8

At one level the problem is the defence of standards: the
finding of adequate reasons to support minority standards
against the depredations of a commercialism that controls

TWO LITERARY CRITICS 263

majority taste. At another level, the discovery o these rea
sons is the necessary advance in consciousness which man
must make if he is to control his destiny now that the old
orientations have gone: no longer *a Rock to shelter under
or to cling to', but 'an efficient aeroplane in which to
ride . . . this tempestuous turmoil of change'. Richards's
sketch of a solution to these problems is his 'Psychological
Theory of Value'. Like Arnold, he is offering culture as an
alternative to anarchy, but culture as an idea has to be
founded on a conception of value dependent not on the old
*keys of wisdom' but on what can be discovered in the new
consciousness.

Richards is careful in his subsequent arguments to em
phasize the tentative nature of any such discovery, in our
present state of knowledge. But he is prepared to offer an
interpretation or formula on which most of his subsequent
work will depend. The conduct of life, he argues,

is throughout an attempt to organize impulses so that
success is obtained for the greater number or mass of
them, for the most important and the weightiest set. 4

Impulses can be divided into 'appetencies* ('seekings after*)
and 'aversions', both of which may be unconscious. Then:

anything is valuable which will satisfy an appetency
without involving the frustration of some equal or
more important appetency. 5

Importance, here, is defined as

the extent of the disturbance of other impulses in the
individual's activities which the thwarting of the im
pulse involves. 6

Such disturbance is disorganization. The adjustment of im
pulses is the process of organization. Right conduct then
becomes a matter of such adjustment and such organiza
tion. Value is a question of the growth of order. When the
question is transferred from the individual to the commu
nity, it can be answered in similar terms. The 'greatest hap
piness of the majority', in Bentham's term, becomes 'the
highest degree of organization of the satisfaction of im-

64 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

pulses'. A common standard will ind some individuals
above, some below it. The tensions thus set up should be
resolved, not in terms of majorities, but

of the actual range and degree of satisfaction which
different possible systematizations of impulse yield. 7

The danger of any public system is that it will waste and
frustrate available energy. Social reform is a matter of lib
eration, through the Mad of organization described, al
though the process wffl not be primarily conscious or
planned. The importance of literature and the arts is that
they offer supreme examples of such organization, and that
in doing so they provide Values' (not prescriptions or mes
sages, but examples of a necessary common process). It
is through experience of and attention to such values that
the wider common reorganization can be initiated and
maintained. It is in this sense that 'poetry can save us':

it is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos. 8

Thus we return to Arnold's prescription of culture against
anarchy, but both 'culture' and *the process of perfection'
have been newly defined.

Richards goes on from this theory of value to describe
the psychology of the artist. Basically, the importance of
the artist is that a wider area of experience is available to
him than to the normal person. Or, to put it in another way,
he is more capable of the kind of organization which has
been described, and is therefore 'able to admit far more
without confusion'. Yet his usefulness, in this, will depend
upon his relative normality.

The ways . . . in which the artist will differ from the
average will as a rule presuppose an immense degree
of similarity. They will be further developments of or
ganizations already well advanced in the majority. His
variations will be conlned to the newest, the most plas
tic, the least ixed part of the mind, the parts for which
reorganization is most easy.

Not all such variations can or ought to be generally fol
lowed. But often they will be significant advances which

TWO LITERAHY CRITICS #65

can serve as models for a general advance. Further, the ex
istence of finely organized responses in the arts offers a con
tinual standard by which what Richards calls the 'stock
responses' can be seen and judged. At any time certain in
complete adjustments, certain immature and inapplicable
attitudes, can be fixed into formulas and widely suggested
and diffused:

The losses incurred by these artificial fixations of at
titudes are evident. Through them the average adult is
worse, not better adjusted to the possibilities of his ex
istence than the child. He is even in the most impor
tant tilings functionally unable to face facts; do what
he will he is only able to face fictions, fictions projected
by his own stock responses. Against these stock re
sponses the artist's internal and external conflicts are
fought, and with them the popular writer's triumphs
are made. 10

The exploitation of these stock responses by commerciaKzed
art and literature, and by the cinema, is a notable fact of
our own culture. While good art may serve the common
process of finer organization, bad art will not only not serve
it, but actively hinder it:

The effects we are considering depend only upon the
kind and degree of organization which is given to the
experiences. If it is at the level of our own best at
tempts or above it (but not so far above as to be out
of reach) we are refreshed. But if our own organization
is broken down, forced to a cruder, a more wasteful
level, we are depressed and temporarily incapacitated,
not only locally but generally . . . unless the critical
task of diagnosis is able to restore equanimity and
composure. 11

On this attitude to good and bad literature, a whole subse
quent critical and educational programme has been based.
It remains to consider a final point made by Richards,
about the social function of art. He takes the familiar the
ory of art as play and by redefining play returns art to a
central position, instead of the marginal leisure-time' posi-

#66 CULTORE AKD SOCIETY 1780-1950

tion which the description as play was meant to suggest
The redefinition rests again on the criterion of organization.
Art is play in the sense that

in a folly developed man a state of readiness for action
will take the place of action when the full appropriate
situation for action is not present. 12

Pky is the training of readiness for action, either in a special
or in a general field. Art, in creating and offering us a situa
tion, is in this sense experimental.

In ordinary life a thousand considerations prohibit for
most of us any complete working-out of our response;
the range and complexity of the impulse-systems in
volved is less; the need for action, the comparative un
certainty and vagueness of the situation, the intru
sion of accidental irrelevancies, inconvenient temporal
spacing the action being too slow or too fastall these
obscure the issue and prevent the full development of
the experience. We have to jump to some rough and
ready solution. But in the Imaginative experience*
these obstacles are removed. Thus what happens here,
what precise stresses, preponderances, conflicts, reso
lutions and intermanimations, what remote relation
ships between different systems of impulses arise, what
before unapprehended and inexecutable connections
are established, is a matter which, we see clearly, may
modify all the rest of life.* 3

The experience of Eterature is thus a kind of training for
general experience: a training, essentially, in that capacity
for organization which is man's only profitable response to
his altered and dangerous condition.

This summary o Bichards's basic position serves to
show, first, the degree to which he is an inheritor of the
general tradition, and second, the extent to which, by of
fering a positive account, he has clarified certain of its con
temporary issues. The clarification is real, as far as it goes,
and its applications in criticism have been of major value.
One of the most valuable points is Richards's return to that
idea of the relative normality of the artist which Words-

TWO LITEKARY CRITICS 267

worth had defined, but which later Romantic writing had
rejected. Herbert Read also defiaes art as a 'mode of knowl
edge', and describes its social function in terms very similar
to those of Richards. But Read, supported by Freud, re
iterates that view of the artist's essential abnormality which
as much as anything has denied art's social bearings. Read
offers the model of three strata of the mind, with the artist
as an example of a kind of 'fault* which exposes the strata
to each other at unusual levels. In the matter of demonstra
ble psychology, our theories of art are still almost wholly
speculative, but the crudeness of Freud's casual comment
on the artist as 'neurotic* is sufficiently evident. Read's ver
sion of contact with deep levels of the mind through the
"fault*, and of the actual making of art as an investment of
this contact 'with superficial charms . . . lest the bare truth
repel us', 14 is similarly unsatisfactory. The whole concept
of levels of the mind 5 , even if restricted to consideration as
a model, is more static than experience appears to require.
If we think, rather, of moving patterns and relations, the
question of Valuable derangement', and even of 'normality*,
seems a limiting term. To separate creation and execution
is the mark of the Romantic disintegration of 'art* into the
separable qualities of 'imaginative truth* and 'skill*. On the
whole, Richards's version of art as 'organization* both re
stores the unity of conception and execution, and offers an
emphasis which can be profitably investigated. We should
add, however, that nearly all theoretical discussions of art
since the Industrial Revolution have been crippled by the
assumed opposition between art and the actual organiza
tion of society, which is important as the historical phe
nomenon that has been traced, but which can hardly be
taken as an absolute. Individual psychology has been simi
larly limited by an assumption of opposition between in
dividual and society which is in fact only a symptom of
society's transitional disorganization. Until we have lived
through this, we are not likely to achieve more than a lim
ited theory of art, but we can be glad meanwhile that the
starting point which has for so long misled usthe artist's
necessary abnormality is being gradually rejected in the
ory, and almost wholly rejected, in terms of practical feel-

268 CIILTTOTBE AND SOCIETY

ing, among a majority of actual artists. The renewed em
phasis on communication is a valuable sign of our gradual
recovery of community.

Richards has had much that is useful to say about com
munication, but, in the general position within which this
has been offered, there are, I think, two points of question.
First, while what Richards says about the extension and
refinement of organization is obviously useful, and corre
sponds in a general way to one's actual experience of litera
ture, there is an element of passivity in his idea of the re
lationship between reader and work which might in the
end be disabling. What one most wants to know about this
process is the detail of its practical operation, at the highest
and most difficult levels. The point can be illustrated, al
though this does not in itself affect the theory, from Rich-
ards's own criticism. He is always very good at the demon
stration of a really crude organization, as in the Wilcox
sonnet discussed in Principles. But he has not offered
enough really convincing examples of the intense realiza
tion of a rich or complex organization, which in general
terms he has often described. He often notes the complex
ity, but the discussion that follows is usually a kind of return
on itself, a return to the category 'complexity*, rather than
an indication of that ultimate refinement and adjustment
which is his most positive general value. One has the sense
of a manipulation of objects which are separate from the
reader, which are out there in the environment. Further,
and perhaps as a consequence of this, there is at times a
kind of servility towards the literary establishment. This
seems an astonishing thing to say about the writer who in
Practical Criticism did more than anyone else to penetrate
the complacency of literary academicism. So much, indeed,
is willingly and gratefully granted. But the idea of litera
ture as a training-ground for life is servile. Richards's ac
count of the inadequacy of ordinary response when com
pared with the adequacy of literary response is a cultural
symptom rather than a diagnosis. Great literature is indeed
enriching, liberating and refining, but man is always and
everywhere more than a reader, has indeed to be a great
deal else before he can even become an adequate reader;

TWO LITERARY CRITICS 269

unless indeed he can persuade himself that literature, as an
ideal sphere of heightened living, will under certain cultural
circumstances operate as a substitute. "We shall then be
thrown back . . . upon poetry. It is capable of saving us/
The very form of these sentences indicates the essential pas
sivity which I find disquieting. Poetry, in this construction,
is the new anthropomorph. Richards's general account may
indeed be an adequate description of man's best use of lit
erature, and such a use, if it comes to be articulated, will
show itself in major criticism. But one has the feeling that
Richards, overwhelmed, has picked out from a generally
hostile environment certain redeeming features, and is con
cerned thereafter with finding a technique by means of
which these features may be not so much used as enabled
to operate on him and others.

This point is related to my second question, which
formed itself, while I was reading, as the observation that
Richards is remarkably innocent of company. By this I
sought to mean, first, that his characteristic relationship is
that of a sole man to a total environment, which is seen,
again out there, as an object. His discussion, in the account
of the theory of value, of the extension to 'communal af
fairs', is characteristically, as in Bentham, based on a mini
mal self-protective abstraction. His rational critique of cus
tom is, as with the Utilitarians, often useful. But the basic
attitude to custom is negative; the critic does not feel him
self essentially involved. Few writers have referred more
often than Richards to what may now be called global
problems, and his own work towards 'the possibilities of
World Communication which Basic English holds out? may
be seen as a contribution to their solution. Yet this kind of
concern is hardly social in the Ml sense. His advocacy of
the rule of Reason (in the conclusion of How to Read a
Page) is of course positive, as against the confusion which.
he and others have analysed. But where, in what bodies, do
reason and confusion operate? Where, in what relation
ships, are they denied or confirmed? These questions, and
surely both must be answered, are bound to lead into the
whole complex of action and interaction which is the prac
tice of living, and which we cannot reduce to such an ab-

270 CULTDKE AND SOCIETY 1780*1950

straction as 'the contemporary situation'. Bichards's account
of the genesis of our problems is a selection of certain
products, not only science as a product but even, in the
terms of the discussion, increased population as a product.
His business, then, is to find another product that is re
deeming. Yet tins innocence of process, which follows natu
rally enough from an innocence of company, is disabling.
We are faced not only with products but with the breath,
the band, that makes, maintains, changes or destroys. All
that Richards has taught us about language and commu
nication, and for which we acknowledge our debt, has to
be reviewed, finally, when we have rid ourselves of those
vestiges of Aesthetic Man alone in a hostile environment,
receiving and organizing his experience which Richards,
even as brilliant opponent, in fact inherited,

n. F. R. Leavis

F. R, Leavis, in the pamphlet Mass Civilization and Mi
nority Culture published in 1930, outlined a particular view
of culture which has become very widely influential. As in
his literary criticism, there is a body of detailed judgements,
and there is also an outline of history. In Culture and En
vironment, written jointly with Denys Thompson and pub
lished in 1933, the detailed judgements recur, and the out
line of history is significantly enlarged. Thereafter, and
mainly in Scrutiny , this essential case continued to be pre
sented. It is natural to associate with it books like Q. D.
Leavis's Fiction and the Reading Public, Denys Thomp
son's Between the Lines and Voice of Civilization, and L. C.
Knights* work in Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson
and Explorations. Leavis's own later writings in this field,
which continually interact with his literary criticism, can be
conveniently examined in Education and the University and
The Common Pursuit. From this whole body of work, to
which one must add a large number of minor contribu
tions by other writers, the significant 'case' emerges clearly
enough.

The basis of the case, and of the essential connexion with

TWO LITERARY CBITICS

literary studies, appears in the opening pages o Mass Civi
lization and Minority Culture:

In any period it is upon a very small minority that the
discerning appreciation of art and literature depends:
it is (apart from cases of the simple and familiar) only
a few who are capable of unprompted, first-hand judg
ment. They are still a small minority, though a larger
one, who are capable of endorsing such first-hand
judgment by genuine personal response. The accepted
valuations are a Mnd of paper currency based upon a
very small proportion of gold. To the state of such a
currency the possibilities of fine living at any time bear
a close relation. . . . The minority capable not only of
appreciating Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Baudelaire,
Hardy (to take major instances) but of recognizing
their latest successors constitute the consciousness of
the race (or of a branch of it) at a given time. For
such capacity does not belong merely to an isolated
aesthetic realm: it implies responsiveness to theory as
well as to art, to science and philosophy in so far as
these may affect the sense of the human situation and
of the nature of life. Upon this minority depends our
power of profiting by the finest human experience of
the past; they keep alive the subest and most perish
able parts of tradition. Upon them depend the implicit
standards that order the finer living of an age, the
sense that this is worth more than that, this rather than
that is the direction in which to go, that the centre is
here rather than there. In their keeping . . . is the
language, the changing idiom, upon which fine living
depends, and without which distinction of spirit is
thwarted and incoherent. By 'culture' I mean the use
of such a language. 1

In certain respects this is a new position in the development
of the idea of Culture. Yet it mainly derives from Arnold,
whom Leavis quite properly acknowledges as his starting
point. What goes back to Arnold goes back also to Cole
ridge but there are significant changes on the way. For
Coleridge the minority was to be a class, an endowed order

2,72, CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

of clerisy whose business was general cultivation, and
whose allegiance was to the whole body of sciences. For
Arnold, the minority was a remnant, composed of individ
uals to be found in all social classes, whose principal dis
tinction was that they escaped the limitations of habitual
class-feeling. For Leavis, the minority is, essentially, a liter
ary minority, which keeps alive the literary tradition and
the finest capacities of the language. This development is
instructive, for the tenuity of the claim to be a 'centre*
is, unfortunately, increasingly obvious. '"Civilization" and
"culture" are coming to be antithetical terms/ Leavis writes
a little later. 2 This is the famous distinction made by Cole
ridge, and the whole development of this idea of culture
rests on it. Culture was made into an entity, a positive body
of achievements and habits, precisely to express a mode of
living superior to that being brought about by the 'progress
of civilization'. For Coleridge the defence of this standard
was to be in the hands of a National Church, including 'the
learned of all denominations'. Since this could not in fact
be instituted, the nature of the defending minority had con
tinually, by the successors of Coleridge, to be redefined.
The process which Arnold began, when he virtually
equated 'culture* with 'criticism', is completed by Leavis,
and had been similarly completed a little earlier, by I. A.
Richards. Of course Leavis is right when he says that many
of the 'subtlest and most perishable parts of tradition* are
contained in our literature and language. But the decline
from Coleridge's allegiance to all the sciences is unfortu
nately real. "To science and philosophy in so far as these
may affect the sense of the human situation and of the na
ture of life' is surely a little grudging. I agree with Leavis,
as with Coleridge and Arnold and with Burke the common
teacher of this point, that a society is poor indeed if it has
nothing to live by but its own immediate and contemporary
experience. But the ways in which we can draw on other
experience are more various than literature alone. For ex
perience that is formally recorded we go, not only to the
rich source of literature, but also to history, building, paint
ing, music, philosophy, theology, political and social theory,
the physical and natural sciences, anthropology, and indeed

TWO UTERABY CBITICS 273

the whole body of learning. We go also, if we are wise,
to the experience that is otherwise recorded: in institutions,

manners, customs, family memories. Literature has a vital
importance because it is at once a formal record of experi
ence, and also, in every work, a point of intersection with
the common language that is, in its major bearings, dif
ferently perpetuated. The recognition of culture as the body
of all these activities, and of the ways in which they are
perpetuated and enter into our common living, was valua
ble and timely. But there was always the danger that this
recognition would become not only an abstraction but in
fact an isolation. To put upon literature, or more accurately
upon criticism, the responsibility of controlling the quality
of the whole range of personal and social experience, is to
expose a vital case to damaging misunderstanding. English
is properly a central matter of all education, but it is not,
clearly, a whole education. Similarly, formal education,
however humane, is not the whole of our gaining of the
social experience of past and present. In his proposals on
education (in Education and the University) Leavis makes,
very clearly, the former point, and few men have done more
to extend the depth and range of literary studies, and to
relate them to other interests and other disciplines. But the
damaging formulation of the nature of the minority re
mains. Leavis might have written:

The minority capable not only of appreciating Shake
speare, the English common law, Lincoln Cathedral,
committee procedure, PurceE, the nature of wage-
labour, Hogarth, Hooker, genetic theory, Hume (to
take major instances) but of recogoMng, either their
successors, or their contemporary changes and impli
cations, constitute the consciousness of the race (or of
a branch of it) at a given time,

If he had done so (while apologizing for the arbitrariness
of the selection) , his claim that 'upon this minority depends
our power of profiting by the Bnest human experience of
the past' would have been, in some degree, more substan
tial. It is a matter not so much of theory as of emphasis.
If, however, he had entered such dangerous lists, the whole

74 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

question of the nature of the minority, of its position in
society, and of its relations with other human beings, might
have been forced more clearly into the open. The difficulty
about the idea of culture is that we are continually forced
to extend it, until it becomes almost identical with our
whole common life. When this is realized, the problems to
which, since Coleridge, we have addressed ourselves are in
fact transformed. If we are to meet them honestly, we have
to face very fine and very difficult adjustments. The as
sumption of a minority, followed by its definition in one's
own terms, seems in practice to be a way of stopping short
of this transformation of the problems, and of our own con
sequent adjustments. The particular view of what is valu
able is taken, in experience, as a whole; the fixed point
is determined; and, as in the literary criticism, a myth,
a significant construction, is persuasively communicated.
Leavis's myth seems to me rather more powerful than most
of its competitors, but there is a point in its propagation
when we begin to see its edges, and the danger, then, is
that in fact we shall undervalue it.

For in fact, and against what has previously been said,
the myth is to a considerable extent adequate, for the pur
poses to which Leavis actually passes. For he is faced, un
like Arnold, with the twentieth-century developments of the
press, advertising, popular fiction, films, broadcasting, and
that whole way of living for which Middletown (from the
Lynds* study of an Illinois town) becomes his symbol. The
critics who first formulated the idea of culture were faced
with industrialism, and with its causes and consequences in
thinking and feeling. Leavis, in 1930, faced not only these
but certain ways of thinking and feeling embodied in im
mensely powerful institutions which threatened to over
whelm the ways that he and others valued. His pamphlet,
given its reference to Richards, is the effective origin of that
practical criticism of these institutions which has been of
growing general importance in the last quarter-century. The
kind of training indicated in Culture and Environment,
which is an educational manual, has been widely imitated
and followed, so that if Leavis and his colleagues had done
only this it would be enough to entitle them to major rec-

TWO LITERARY CRITICS 2/5

ognition. It is not, of course, that the threat lias been re
moved; indeed it may even be said to have grown in mag
nitude. 'That deliberate exploitation ol the cheap response
which characterises our civilization* is still very widely evi
dent. But it is not negligible to have instituted a practical
method of training in discrimination a method which has
been widely applied and can yet be greatly extended in
our whole educational system. Because the exploitation is
deliberate, and because its techniques are so powerful, the
educational training has to be equally deliberate. And the
magnificent contrasting vitality of literature is an essential
control and corollary.

The Leavis who promoted this kind of work is the Leavis
of detailed judgements. It is obvious, however, that the
ways of feeling and thinking embodied in such institutions
as the popular press, advertising and the cinema cannot
finally be criticized without reference to a way of life. The
questions, again, insistently extend. Is the deliberate ex
ploitation a deliberate pursuit of profit, to the neglect or
contempt of other considerations? Why, if this is so, should
cheapness of expression and response be profitable? If our
civilization is a 'mass-civilization*, without discernible re
spect for quality and seriousness, by what means has it
become so? What, in fact, do we mean by 'mass*? Do we
mean a democracy dependent on universal suffrage, or a
culture dependent on universal education, or a reading-
public dependent on universal literacy? If we find the prod
ucts of mass-civilization so repugnant, are we to identify
the suffrage or the education or the literacy as the agents
of decay? Or, alternatively, do we mean by mass-civili
zation an industrial civilization, dependent on machine-
production and the factory system? Do we find institutions
like the popular press and advertising to be the necessary
consequences of such a system of production? Or, again,
do we find both the machine-civilization and the institu
tions to be products of some great change and decline in
human minds? Such questions, which are the common
places of our generation, inevitably underlie the detailed
judgements. And Leavis, though he has never claimed to
offer a theory of such matters, has in fact, in a number of

76 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

ways, committed himself to certain general attitudes which
amount to a recognizable attitude towards modern history
and society.

The attitude will be quickly recognized by those who
have followed the growth of the idea of culture. Its main
immediate sources are D. H. Lawrence (whose relations to
the earlier tradition have been noted) and the books of
George Start ('George Bourne'), especially Change in the
Village and The Wheelwright's Shopwaiks which, while
original and valuable in their observation, go back, essen
tially, to Cobbett. A characteristic general statement by
Leavis and Thompson is the following:

Sturt speaks of 'the death of Old England and of the
replacement of the more primitive nation by an "or
ganized" modem state'. The Old England was the
England of the organic community, and in what sense
it was more primitive than the England that has re
placed it needs pondering. But at the moment what
we have to consider is the fact that the organic com
munity has gone; it has so nearly disappeared from
memory that to make anyone, however educated, re
alize what it was is commonly a difficult undertaking.
Its destruction (in the West) is the most important
fact of recent historyit is very recent indeed. How
did this momentous change this vast and terrifying
disintegration take place in so short a time? The proc
ess of the change is that which is commonly described
as Progress. 3

Several points in this are obscure: in particular, the exact
weight of the adjective organic and its apparent contrast
with organized (see note at the end of this chapter). But
it seems clear, from the examples quoted in support, that
the 'momentous change' is the Industrial Revolution. The
'organic community* is a rural community:

The more 'primitive* England represented an animal
naturalness, but distinctively human. Sturf s villagers
expressed their human nature, they satisfied their hu
man needs, in terms of the natural environment; and

TWO LITERABY CRITICS

the things they made cottages, bams, ricks, and wag
gonstogether with their relations with one another
constituted a human environment, and a subtlety of
adjustment and adaptation, as right and inevitable

In contrast with this way of life is set the urban, suburban,
mechanized modernity, on which such comments as these
are possible:

The modem labourer, the modern clerk, the modern
factory-hand live only for their leisure, and the result
is that they are unable to live in their leisure when
they get it. Their work is meaningless to them, merely
something they have to do in order to earn a livelihood,
and consequently when their leisure comes It is mean
ingless, and all the uses they can put it to come almost
wholly under the head of what Stuart Chase calls
'decreation*. . . . 5

. . . The modern citizen no more knows how the nec
essaries of life come to him (he is quite out of touch,
we say, with 'primary production*) than he can see his
own work as a significant part in a human scheme (he
is merely earning wages or making profits). 6

The points are familiar, but it is impossible to feel them to
be adequate. The version of history is myth in the sense
of conjecture, for while on such points as the adaptation
to natural environment shown in building and tools, or on
the related point about such traditional crafts as the car
penter's, it is possible, on the whole, to agree, it is a very
different matter to assert, for instance, that the Tiuman en
vironment . . . their relations with one another' was in fact
'right and inevitable'. This is, I think, a surrender to a char
acteristically industrialist, or urban, nostalgia a late version
of mediaevalism, with its attachments to an 'adjusted' feudal
society. If there is one thing certain about 'the organic com
munity*, it is that it has always gone. Its period, in the con
temporary myth, is the rural eighteenth century; but for
Goldsmith, in The Deserted Village (i77)> it had gone;
for Crabbe, in The Village ( 1783) , it was hardly 'right and

2/8 CULTUHE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

inevitable'; for Cobbett, in 1820, it had gone since his boy
hood (that is to say, it existed when Goldsmith and Crabbe
were writing) ; for Start it was there until late in the nine
teenth century; for myself (if I may be permitted to add
this, for I was bom into a village, and into a family of many
generations of farm-labourers) it was there or the aspects
quoted, the inherited skills of work, the slow traditional
talk, the continuity of work and leisure in the 19305. What
is being observed, and what, when rightly weighted, is im
portant, is an important tradition of social and productive
experience that has grown out of certain long-persistent
conditions. It is useful to contrast this with the difficulties
of comparable richness of adjustment to the urban and fac
tory conditions of which experience is so much shorter. But
it is misleading to make this contrast without making others,
and it is foolish and dangerous to exclude from the so-called
organic society the penury, the petty tyranny, the disease
and mortality, the ignorance and frustrated intelligence
which were also among its ingredients. These are not ma
terial disadvantages to be set against spiritual advantages;
the one thing that such a community teaches is that life is
whole and continuous it is the whole complex that matters.
That which is commonly described as Progress' saved spirit
and blood.

The basic intellectual fault of such formulations as that
in Culture and Environment is, curiously, the taking of as
pects for wholes. A valid detailed judgement grows too
quicldy into a persuasive outline. The tendency to reduce
experience to literary evidence alone is commonly tempting.
Middletown is a frightening book; many advertisements and
many newspapers are cheap and nasty. But do we not too
easily construct from such evidence a contemptuous version
of the lives of our contemporaries, which we should be hard
put to it to prove from life, although we could prove it easily
enough, or so it would seem, from print? Is it true, for in
stance, that to 'the modern labourer, the modem clerk, the
modern factory-hand' all their work is 'meaningless*, except
as a means to money? Is it true that 'all die uses they can
put* their leisure to are almost wholly 'decreation? Is it true
that 'the modem citizen* hardly knows liow the necessaries

TWO LITERARY CRITICS

of life come to him? What is true, I would argue, is that a
number of new kinds of unsatisfying work have come into
existence; a number of new kinds of cheap entertainment;
and a number of new kinds of social division. Against these
must be set a number of new kinds of satisfying work; cer
tain evident improvements, and new opportunities, in edu
cation; certain important new kinds of social organization.
Between all these and other factors, the balance has to be
more finely drawn than the myth allows.

My reason for making these points in relation to Leavis's
work, when they might equally have been made about
other work where the myth is more palpable, and, on oc
casion, more sentimentally misleading, is that, in the case
of Leavis, these elements have become as it seems inex
tricably entangled with the advocacy of educational pro
posals that are wholly valuable. Culture and Environment
makes certain reservations: 'we must beware of simple solu
tions . , . there can be no mere going back ... the mem
ory of the old order must be the chief incitement towards
a new'. 7 These are useful, and serve to introduce the pri
mary stress on an education that will seek to control the
disintegrating and cheapening forces, both by direct 'de
fensive' training, and by that positive training in experience
which literature is qualified to offer. The making and ex
tension of such an education are so vital that one regrets
the inclusion, in this advocacy, of social conclusions and
attitudes which are, to say the least, doubtful. The point
must be referred back to the earlier point about the nature
of the 'minority*. Leavis might reasonably reply, to what I
have there written, that to see literature as a specialism
among others is not to see literature at all. I would agree
with this. But the emphasis I am trying to make is that,
in the work of continuity and change, and just because of
the elements of disintegration, we cannot make literary ex
perience the sole test, or even the central test. We cannot
even, I would argue, put the important stress on the 'mi
nority*, for the idea of the conscious minority is itself no
more than a defensive symptom, against the general dan
gers. When Eliot combines the idea of a minority culture
with his rejection of the ideas of democracy, he is on more

280 cui/nuHE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

consistent, If certainly sourer, ground. Leavis, having made
the vital connexion between a whole way of life and the
capacity for valuable literary experience, is surely bound,
for anything beyond the immediately necessary defensive
measures, to a conception of the growth of a society, and
its whole way of life, which should more adequately em
body such lands of experience. It is not so much a matter
of announcing some political allegiance. It is a matter,
rather, in our whole social experience, of declaring that
'this is worth more than that, this rather than that is the
direction in which to go'. The difficulties are obvious, but
I suspect that they are impossibly increased by continued
allegiance to an outline of history which tends to suggest
that 'what is commonly described as Progress' is almost
wholly decline.

As I have understood Leavis's subsequent work, he has
chosen to concentrate, on the one hand on persistent de
fensive actions, on the other hand, in criticism, on such
re-creation as is possible. As a life's work (and one as yet
unfinished) it has been a major achievement. Others have
taken over the criticism of the popular press, advertising,
the cinema and so on which is now almost a commonplace.
Leavis, most valuably, has gone on with his criticism of
some of the apparent alternatives to these: the ^better' press,
the *better' books. He has also, notably in his defence of
Lawrence, come much nearer to acknowledging important
elements in post-Industrial English society, which the out
lines of Culture and Environment neglected. In his com
ments on Bunyan, on Dickens and on Mark Twain he has
made a more positive theoretical commitment to actual and
general social experience than the concept of a defensive
minority (whose social experience is mainly from the past)
seemed to allow. He has attacked what he calls the domina
tion of the world of English letters by a small interlocking
group, and has reduced to its proper impotence the ordi
nary conception of a superior minority which happens to
coincide with a particular social class. He has, at the same
time, continued to attack the Marxist version of a social
alternative: intellectually, on the grounds of its abstraction;
socially, on the nature of its realization in Russia. All this

TWO LITEKARY CRITICS 28 1

has brought him many enemies, but he has kept his course.
And it is not so much, now, a matter of assessing his own
life's work, as of assessing the value of the directions which
he has initiated. I can only say, in conclusion, that the ex
tremely valuable educational proposals, and the important
and illuminating local judgements, which are real gains,
have to be set against losses, some of which are serious.
The concept of a cultivated minority, set over against a
Recreated* mass, tends, in its assertion, to a damaging ar
rogance and scepticism. The concept of a wholly organic
and satisfying past, to be set against a disintegrated and
dissatisfying present, tends in its neglect of history to a de
nial of real social experience. The cultural training ought
essentially to be a training in democracy, which has to be
a training in direct judgements. Yet the contingent elements
in the myth have led, at worst to a pseudo-aristocratic au
thoritarianism, at best to a habitual scepticism which has
shown itself very intolerant of any contemporary social com
mitment. Leavis's distinction as a critic, and Ms equal dis
tinction as a teacher, are unquestioned. But it is al the
more necessary, if the distinction is to be insisted upon, to
realize the inadequacies and the dangers of what is now
the 'minority culture* dogma.

A Note on 'Organic*

Few English words are more difficult than 'organic*, which
has a vast and complicated semantic history. The Greek
opyovov first meant 'tool' or 'instrument", and opyoviKoq
was equivalent to our 'mechanical*. But there was a de
rived sense of 'physical organ' (the eye an ^instrument for
seeing') and on this the whole association with living be
ings was subsequently made. In English, 'mechanical' and
'organicaF are synonyms in the sixteenth century, but in
the eighteenth century the physical and biological refer
ences begin to predominate. Then in Burke and Coleridge,
'organic* begins to be used to describe institutions and so
cieties, and one of the senses of 'mechanical' ( = 'artificial')
is used to establish a now familiar contrast. The contrast

CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

is then extended into the 'organ' family itself: 'organ' = "or
gan of sense', giving rise to praise-words such as 'organic'
and 'organism', while 'organ' = 'instrument' produces 'or
ganize' and 'organization'. Burke used 'organic' and 'organ
ized' as synonyms, but by the middle nineteenth century
they are commonly opposed ('natural' vs. 'planned' society,

etc.).

There are five apparent reasons why 'organic' became
popular: to stress an idea of 'wholeness* in society; to stress
the growth of a 'people*, as in rising nationalisms; to stress
'natural growth', as in 'culture', with particular reference
to slow change and adaptation; to reject 'mechanist' and
'materialist' versions of society; to criticize industrialism, in
favour of a society 'in close touch with natural processes'
(i.e. agriculture). The range is too wide and too tempting
to be ordinarily scanned, and the word is now commonly
used by writers of wholly opposed opinions: e.g. Marxists
stressing 'a whole, formed State'; Conservatives 'a slowly
adapting society and tradition'; critics of machine-produc
tion *a predominantly agricultural society'; Bertrand Rus
sell, on the other hand, *a predominantly industrial society':
Vhen we are exhorted to make society "organize", it is from
machinery that we shall necessarily derive our models, since
we do not know how to make society a living animal' (Pros
pects of Industrial Civilization) . At the very least, this com
plication indicates the need for caution in using the word
without immediate definition. Perhaps all societies are or
ganic (i.e. formed wholes) , but some are more organic (ag
ricultural/industrial than others.

CHAPTER V

MARXISM AND CULTURE

MARX was the contemporary of Ruskin and George Eliot,
but the Marxist interpretation of culture did not become
widely effective in England until the 'thirties of our own
century. William Morris had linked the cause of ait with
the cause of socialism, and his socialism was of the revolu
tionary Marxist kind. But the terms of Morris's position were
older, an inheritance from the general tradition which came
down to him through Ruskin. As he told the Northumber
land miners, in 1887:

Even supposing he did not understand that there was
a definite reason in economics, and that the whole sys
tem could be changed ... he for one would be a rebel
against it. 1

The economic reasoning, and the political promise., came
to him from Marxism; the general rebellion was in older
terms.

Marx himself outlined, but never fully developed, a cul
tural theory. His casual comments on literature, for exam
ple, are those of a learned, intelligent man of his period,
rather than what we now know as Marxist literary criticism.
On occasion, his extraordinary social insight extends a com
ment, but one never feels that he is applying a theory. Not
only is the tone of his discussion of these matters normally
undogmatic, but also he is quick to restrain, whether in
literary theory or practice, what he evidently regarded as
an over-enthusiastic, mechanical extension of his political,
economic and historical conclusions to other kinds of fact.
Engels, though habitually less cautious, is very similar in
tone. This is not to say, of course, that Marx lacked confi
dence in the eventual extension of such conclusions, or in
the filling-in of his outline. It is only that his genius recog-

284 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

nized difficulty and complexity, and that Ms personal disci
pline was a discipline to fact.

The outline which Marx drew, and which has proved to
be so fruitful and Important, appears most clearly in the
Preface to Ms Critique of Political Economy (1859) :

In the social production wMch men carry on they enter
into definite relations that are indispensable and inde
pendent of their will; these relations of production cor
respond to a definite stage of development of their ma
terial powers of production. The sum total of these
relations of production constitutes the economic struc
ture of society the real foundation, on wMch rise legal
and political superstructures and to wMch correspond
definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of pro
duction in material life determines the general charac
ter of the social, political and spiritual processes of life.
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence,, but, on the contrary, their social existence
determines their consciousness. . . . With the change
of the economic foundation the entire immense super
structure is more or less rapidly transformed. In con
sidering such transformations the distinction should al
ways be made between the material transformation of
the economic conditions of production wMch can be
determined with the precision of natural science, and
the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or phflosopMc
in short, ideological forms in wMch men become con
scious of this conflict and fight it out. 2

The distinction mentioned is obviously of great importance.
Even if we accept the formula of structure and superstruc
ture, we have Maxafs word that changes in the latter are
necessarily subject to a different and less precise mode of
investigation. The point is reinforced by the verbal qualifi
cations of Ms text: "detenmnes the general character"; 'more
or less rapidly transformed'. The superstructure is a matter
of human consciousness, and this is necessarily very com
plex, not only because of its diversity, but also because it
is always historical: at any time, it includes continuities
from the past as well as reactions to the present. Marx in-

MARXISM AND CULTURE 285

deed at times regards ideology as a false consciousness: a
system of continuities which change has in fact undermined.
He writes in The Eighteenth Bmmaire;

Upon the several forms of property, upon the so
cial conditions of existence, a whole superstructure is
reared of various and peculiarly shaped feelings, Illu
sions, habits of thought, and conceptions of life. The
whole class produces and shapes these out of its ma
terial foundation and out of the corresponding social
conditions. The individual unit to whom they flow
through tradition and education may fancy that they
constitute the true reasons for and premises of his
conduct. 3

If then a part of the superstructure is mere rationalization,
the complexity of the whole is further increased.

This recognition of complexity is the first control in any
valid attempt at a Marxist theory of culture. The second
control, more controversial, is an understanding of the for
mula of structure and superstructure. In Marx this formula
is definite, but perhaps as no more than an analogy. Cer
tainly when we come to this comment by Engels there is
need to reconsider:

According to the materialist conception of history, the
determining element in history is ultimately the pro
duction and reproduction in real life. More than this
neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If therefore
somebody twists this into the statement that the eco
nomic element is the only determining one, he trans
forms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd
phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the
various elements of the superstructure political forms
of the class struggle and its consequences, constitutions
established by the victorious class after a successful
battle, etc. forms of law and then even the reflexes
of all these actual struggles in the brains of the com
batants: political, legal, and philosophical theories, re
ligious ideas and their further development into sys
tems of dogma also exercise their influence upon the

286 COLTUKE AND SOCIETY

course of the historical struggles and in many cases
preponderate in determining their form. There is an
interaction of all these elements, in which, amid all
the endless host of accidents (i.e. of things and events
whose inner connection is so remote or so impossible
to prove that we regard it as absent and can neglect
it) the economic element finally asserts itself as neces
sary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any
period of history one chose would be easier than the
solution of a simple equation of the first degree. 4

Here again the emphasis falls on complexity, but the result
of the emphasis is a lessening of the usefulness of the
formula which Marx used. Structure and superstructure, as
terms of an analogy, express at once an absolute and a fixed
relationship. But the reality which Marx and Engels recog
nize is both less absolute and less clear. Engels virtually
introduces three levels of reality: the economic situation;
the political situation; the state of theory. Yet any formula
in terms of levels, as in terms of structure and superstruc
ture, does less than justice to the factors of movement which
it is the essence of Marxism to realize. We arrive at a dif
ferent model, in which reality is seen as a very complex
field of movement, within which the economic forces finally
reveal themselves as the organizing element.

Engels uses the word 'interaction*, but this does not im
ply any withdrawal of the claims for economic primacy.
The point is clearly made by Plekhanov, in The Develop
ment of the Monist Theory of History ( 1895) :

Interaction exists * . . nevertheless, by itself it explains

nothing. In order to understand interaction, one must
ascertain the attributes of the interacting forces and
these attributes cannot find their ultimate explanation
in the fact of interaction, however much they may
change thanks to that fact. . . . The qualities of the
interacting forces, tihe attributes of the social organisms
influencing one another, are explained in the long run
by the cause we already know: the economic structure
of these organisms, which is determined by the state
of their productive forces. 9

MARXISM AND CULTURE 287

Plekhanov concedes that there are 'particular laws . . in
the development of human thought'; Marxists will not, for
example, identify 'the laws of logic with the laws of the
circulation of commodities*. All that a Marxist will deny is
that the laws of thought' are the prime mover of intellec
tual development; the prime mover is economic change. He
continues:

Sensitive but weak-headed people are indignant with
the theory of Marx because they take its first word to
be its last. Marx says: in explaining the subject, let us
see in what mutual relations people enter under the
influence of objective necessity. Once these relations
are known, it will be possible to ascertain how human
self-consciousness develops under their influence. . . .
Psychology adapts itself to economy. But this adapta
tion is a complex process ... on the one hand the
Iron laws' of movement of the 'string 7 ... on the other,
on the 'string* and precisely thanks to its movement,
there grows up the 'garment of life' of ideology. 6

Evidently Plekhanov is searching here (not altogether suc
cessfully) for a model more satisfactory than structure and
superstructure. He is aware of Marx's reservation about the
study of ideas, and admits:

Much, very much, is still obscure for us in this sphere.
But there is even more that is obscure for the idealists,
and yet more for eclectics, who however never under
stand the significance of the difficulties they encounter,
imagining that they will always be able to settle any
question with the help of their notorious 'interaction'.
In reality, they never settle anything, but only hide
behind the back of the difficulties they encounter. 7

There is then an interaction, but this cannot be positively
understood unless the organizing force of the economic ele
ment is recognized. A Marxist theory of culture will rec
ognize diversity and complexity, will take account of con
tinuity within change, will allow for chance and certain
limited autonomies, but, with these reservations, will take
the facts of the economic structure and the consequent so-

288 CULTOTE AMD SOCIETY 1780-1950

cial relations as the guiding string on which a culture is
woven, and by following which a culture is to be under
stood. This, still an emphasis rather than a substantiated
theory, is what Marxists of our own century received from
their tradition.

n

Marxist writing in England in the last thirty years has
been very mixed in both quality and occasion. The political
writing of the 'thirties was primarily a response to actual
conditions in England and Europe, rather than a conscious
development of Marxist studies. The conditions justified the
response, even where it fell short of adequacy. But the re
sult was that many English readers made their first ac
quaintance with Marxist theory in writings that were in
fact local and temporary, both in affiliation and intention.
It has of course been possible to compile from these the
kind of fools* gallery which always appears in any general
movement. I cannot see that this kind of smoking-out is
fair dealing with Marxism as such, but equally it is as well
for Marxists to remember that very many mistakes were
made, and that these are less easy to forgive because of
the tone of dogmatic infallibility which characterized some
of the most popular writings. A collection of essays like
The Mind in Chains was always mixed in quality, but it is
now most clearly marked by its temporary character the
very thing which at the time must have seemed to guaran
tee its sense of reality. We are told in the Introduction that
the T)elie which runs like a backbone through the whole
of this book' 8 is R. E. Warner's conclusion;

Capitalism has no further use for culture. On the one
hand, the material stagnation of capitalism brings it
about that fewer and fewer scholars, scientists, and
technicians are required for the process of production.
On the other hand, being no longer able to represent
itself as a progressive force, capitalism can no longer
invite the support of the general ideals of culture and
progress.

MABXJSM. AND CULTUKE 289

The general point Is familiar, but capitalism, in its powers
of recovery, even if indeed these are only temporary, was
quite evidently underestimated, with the result that a whole
set of attitudes, consequent on experience of depression, fell
when the economic situation changed. Almost every kind of
political prophecy has been wrong, but the Marxist claim
to special insight into these matters of the life and death of
an economic system makes concession of error less easy.
Statements like that quoted above have, in general, not been
reargued or revised, but merely dropped.

Yet Warner's general point about culture is reasonable:

The progress of culture is dependent on the progress of
the material conditions for culture; and, in particular,
the social organization of any period of history limits
the cultural possibilities of that period. Yet all through
history there is a constant interaction between culture
and social organization. Culture, it is true, cannot go
beyond what is possible, but social organization can
and does lag behind what, from the point of view of
culture, is both possible and desirable. There is a con
tinuity both between various forms of social organiza
tion and various forms of culture, but the cultural
continuity is the more marked because, for one thing,
it is easier to envisage possibilities than to put them
into practice, and also because change and progress
in society have always been resisted for as long as
possible by those interested persons who, being for the
moment at the top, stand to lose by any readjustment
within the whole. We find that, at those periods of
history when a change of social organization is nec
essary, culture comes into opposition to the time-
honoured standards of society, standards which, by the
way, were elevated and properly honoured by the cul
ture of the past, but which have proved inadequate
and uninspiring for a further advance into the fu
ture. 10

This is obviously relevant to the development of ideas and
feelings, traced hitherto, which gave us the modern mean
ings of 'culture'. But I am not sure whether this is indeed

290 GUI/TUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

a Marxist interpretation. While recognizing the material
basis of culture, it seems to come very near to an Arnoldian
definition, in which culture can be in advance of the eco
nomic and social organization, ideally embodying the fu
ture. In many Englishmen writing as Marxists I have
noticed this. A tradition basically proceeding from the Ro
mantics, and coming down through Arnold and Morris, has
been supplemented by certain phrases from Marx, while
continuing to operate in the older terms. Much of the
'Marxist' writing of the 'thirties was in fact the old Roman
tic protest that there was no place in contemporary society
for the artist and the intellectual, with the new subsidiary
clause that the workers were about to end the old system
and establish Socialism, which would then provide such a
place. The correlative protests against unemployment, pov
erty and Fascism were genuine; but the making-over of the
workers' cause into the intellectuals' cause was always likely
to collapse: either as the intellectuals found a place in dif
ferent ways, or as the workers' cause asserted its primacy
and moved in directions not so immediately acceptable or
favourable. In seeing the literary Marxism of the 'thirties,
in its general aspects, as a new case of the 'negative identifi
cation' described in relation to Gissing, I have of course the
advantage of hindsight: it is a characteristic of the negative
identification that it breaks up at points of real social crisis
and reacts into an indifference to politics, recantation, or
sometimes violent assault on the cause that has been aban
doned. Because I believe tihis to be a law, its actions sub
ject to the immense pressures of society, I have no desire
to rehearse personalities. I note only the fact that 'culture'
was not so far ahead, not so firmly affiliated to the future,
as was then thought.

Alick West's Crisis and Criticism (1937) includes an
account of the continuity between Romantic and Marxist
ideas. He writes:

Romantic criticism was a great achievement. Its con
ception of social relations as constituting beauty in art,
of a conflict and antagonism in these relations and of
the same conflict reconciled in art, of poetry as the

MABXISM AND CUI-TUBE 2Q1

voice of humanity against oppression and injustice and
of the duty of the poets to cooperate in ending them
all these ideas are of the highest value. Instead of abus
ing them, or divorcing them from their social meaning,
or preserving only their idealism, we have to use them.
We cannot use them simply as they stand, because of
that idealism. As indicated earlier, the romantic poets
were unable in their particular circumstances to give a
material meaning to their social conceptions. . . .
Hence, in romantic criticism, the social relations which
constitute beauty in art are not the actual social rela
tions, but the conception of the relations. 11

It is certainly true that the abstractions of Art and Culture
were a substitute for satisfactory social relations, both in
art itself and in general living. It is also true that the most
evident weakness of the subsequent tradition was its fail
ure to find any adequate social force by means of which the
"superior reality* of Art and Culture might be established
and maintained. West, from his analysis, argues that Marx
transformed Romantic idealism by giving it the content of
material social relations. It is true at least that Morris, learn
ing from Marx, found what he took to be a social force
adequate to these ends in the working-class struggle for so
cialism. Yet this is not necessarily the Marxist way of put
ting the matter. E. P. Thompson, giving a recent Maoist
account of Morris, writes:

While this dialectical understanding of change,
growth and decay was ever-present in his writing, he
saw man's economic and social development always as
the master-process, and tended to suggest that the arts
were passively dependent upon social change. . . .
Morris has not emphasized sufficiently the ideological
r61e of art, its active agency in changing human beings
and society as a whole, its agency in man's class-
divided history. 12

The question is very difficult, but it is surely surprising to
find a Marxist criticizing Morris for seeing 'man's economic
and social development always as the master-process'. It

GUI/TUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

has normally been assumed that this was precisely what
Marx taught, and the position that Marxists wished to de
fend. One had understood that the arts were 'dependent
upon social change'; but perhaps 'passively dependent'
makes the difference. Morris sometimes suggested that the
cause of art must wait upon the success of socialism, and
this (though it is purely an argument in the head: art of
one kind or another in any case goes on being produced)
may well be wrong. But wrong in what sense? That art
is not subject to so simple an equation, as most non-
Marxists would say? That good art can be produced in the
struggle as well as in the success, which English Marxists,
for obvious reasons, seem to wish to establish? The point
is only of general interest in its bearings upon the basic
Marxist position. Morris's 'master-process', which Thomp
son criticizes, is surely Marx's 'real foundation', which 'de
termines consciousness'. Engels spoke of 'the relexes of all
these actual straggles in the brains of the combatants";
surely, on a Maoist reading, art is one of these reflexes,
Such reflexes, Engels said, 'exercise their influence upon
the course of the historical struggles and in many cases
preponderate in determing their form*. 'But only the
form/ 13 insists Ralph Fox, in The Novel and the People,
another Marxist view of literature. In what Marxist sense,
then, has art this 'active agency in changing human beings
and society as a whole? Marx and Engels did not deny the
effect of the 'relexes' back upon the whole situation, but
that one of themart might act to change 'human beings
and society as a whole' is hardly consistent with their kind
of emphasis. That art has this function is, however, a com
monplace of the Romantic attitude: the poet as legislator.
One had understood from West, however, that this was an
idealist attitude based on an ignorance of social reality. It
certainly seems relevant to ask English Marxists who have
interested themselves in the arts whether this is not Ro
manticism absorbing Marx, rather than Marx transforming
Romanticism. It is a matter of opinion which one would
prefer to happen. Yet, in one way or another, the situation
will have to be clarified. Either the arts are passively de
pendent on social reality, a proposition which I take to be

MABXISM AND CULTURE #93

that of mechanical materialism, or a vulgar misinterpreta
tion of Marx. Or the arts, as the creators of consciousness,
determine social reality, the proposition which the Roman
tic poets sometimes advanced. Or finally, the arts, while
ultimately dependent, with everything else, on the real eco
nomic structure, operate in part to relect this structure and
its consequent reality, and in part, by affecting attitudes
towards reality, to help or hinder the constant business of
changing it. I find Marxist theories of culture confused be
cause they seem to me, on different occasions and in dif
ferent writers, to make use of all these propositions as the
need serves.

It is clear that many English writers on culture who are
also, politically, Marxists seem primarily concerned to make
out a case for its existence, to argue that it is important,
against a known reaction to Marxism which had established
the idea that Marx, with his theory of structure and super
structure, had diminished the value hitherto accorded to
intellectual and imaginative creation. Certainly there has
been a quite shocking ignorance of what Marx wrote among
those who have been prepared to criticize him, and the
term 'superstructure' has been bandied about, as a kind of
swearword, with wholly ridiculous implications. Political
prejudice, obviously, has played its part in this. Yet I do
not see how it can be denied that Marx did in one sense
diminish the value of such work: not that he failed to re
spect it, and to consider it a great and important human
achievement, but he denied, what had hitherto been com
monly believed, that it was this kind of work that decided
human development: *it is not the consciousness of men that
determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their exist
ence determines their consciousness*. The shock of this, to
thinkers and artists who had been accustomed to think of
themselves as the pioneers of humanity, was real; it was a
change of status comparable to that implied for men gen
erally by Darwin. Much of the subsequent development of
Marxism, it would seem, has been determined, in the mat
ter of culture, by this reaction. It had to be shown that
Marxists gave a high value to culture, although this proof
that culture was important seemed, to other thinkers at

CULTUW, AND SOCIETY

least, unnecessary. It remains surprising, to others differ
ently trained, that the normal Marxist book on, say, litera
ture begins with a proof that literature is valuable: this had
never seemed to be in any question, and one is reminded of
Mill making the same point to the Utilitarians. But, while
some of this writing can only be understood in such terms,
a theory of culture was, of course, necessary, to the extent
that Marxism became a major interpretative and active
movement. Not only, it was thought, had past and present
culture to be interpreted, in Marxist terms, but so also (and
this has been very prevalent, although whether it is alto
gether Marxist is doubtful) future culture had to be pre
dicted. In England, this work has been mainly done in re
lation to literature, and we must consider its nature.

The normal theoretical beginning is from the nature of
language, as here in West:

Language . . . grew as a form of social organization.
Literature as art continues that growth. It Hves lan
guage; it carries on the social activity of which lan
guage in its very existence is the creation and the
creator. 14

Here we are at once involved in the extremely complicated
question of the origins of language. West relies on Noire,
Paget and Marr; Caudwell, in Illusion and "Reality, on as
sertion, which seems to derive from Darwin via Paget, but
also from de Laguna, Linguistic theory is at once very spe
cialized and very controversial, and the question of origins
is necessarily to some extent speculative. A general stress
on the social character of language can be readily accepted,
and it would seem that, in practice, language does operate
as a form of social organization, and that what it represents
is an activity rather than a mere deposit. But the end of
West's argument is already assumed in the special and ex
tremely controversial senses in which he understands 'or
ganization* and 'activity'. He continues:

the source of value in the work of literature is the social
energy and activity which makes the writer's vision a
continuation of the development of the power to see,

MABXISM AND CULTTOE 2Q5

his use o language a continuation of ... the power

to speak; and not merely the consumer's use of what
society has already produced. Our perception of that
value is the stimulation in us of the same social energy
and activity. 15

This is saying much less than it seems to say. I cannot im
agine anyone whom the middle phrases would surprise.
And again, the end of the argument is assumed in the form
of words. For West can now continue:

The value of literature springs from the fact that it
continues and changes the organization of social en
ergy; we perceive value through the awakening of the
same kind of energy in ourselves. 16

And from this it is easy to identify valuable literature with
that which proceeds from participation in 'the most active
group and tendency of his time', and then, in contemporary
terms, with the 'most creative movement . . . socialism'.

'Consequently',

the criticism of our lives, by the test of whether we are
helping forward the most creative movement in our
society, is the only effective foundation of the criticism

of literature. 17

From this it is only a step (although West, to do him jus
tice, does not take it, insisting on the reality of aesthetic

judgement) to the kind of literary criticism which has made
Marxism notorious: Is this work socialist or not in tend
ency? is it helping forward the most creative movement in
society?' where literature is defined solely in terms of its
political affiliations. Marxists, more than anyone else, need
to repudiate this land of end-product, in practice as firmly
as in theory. But one can see how a potentially valuable
argument is distorted, throughout, by an assumed need to
arrive at this kind of conclusion, or at one resembling it.
It is a conclusion, moreover, with which there seems no
need for Marx to be saddled. Literature is quite obviously,
in the general sense, a social activity, and value does seem
to lie in the writer's access to certain kinds of energy which

CtOLTOKE AND SOCIETY

appear and can be discussed in directly literary terms (that
is to say, as an intention that has become language), but
which, by general agreement, have a more-than-Iiterary
origin, and lie in the whole complex of a writer's relations
with reality. It is the identification of this energy with par
ticipation in a particular kind of social or political activity
which is, to say the least, not proven. The positive evidence,
where this kind of energy is manifest, suggests no such sim
ple equation.

Christopher Caudwell remains the best-known of these
English Marxist critics, but his influence is curious. His the
ories and outlines have been widely learned, although in
fact he has little to say, of actual literature, that is even
interesting. It is not only that it is difficult to have confi
dence in the literary qualifications of anyone who can give
his account of the development of mediaeval into Eliza
bethan drama, 18 or who can make his paraphrase of the
'sleep* line from Macbeth, 1 but that for the most part his
discussion is not even specific enough to be wrong. On the
other hand, he is immensely prolific of ideas, over an un
usually wide field of interest. It is now rather difficult to
know which of these ideas may properly be described as
Marxist. A recent controversy among English Marxists, on
the value of CaudwelTs work, revealed an extraordinary dif
ference of opinion, ranging from George Thomson's view
that Illusion and Reality is 'the first comprehensive attempt
to work out a Marxist theory of art', 20 with the implication
of major success, to J. D. Denial's conclusion:

It is largely on account of his use of the language of

popular science that CaudwelTs work has had, and still
has, such an appeal to intellectuals, particularly to lit
erary intellectuals. 21

Bernal adds that the formulations in CaudwelTs books

are those of contemporary bourgeois scientific philoso
phy . . . and not those of Marxism. 22

This is a quarrel which one who is not a Marxist will not
attempt to resolve.
It is worth noting, however, that the hub of the Marxist

MABXISM AND CULTUBE 297

controversy about Caudwell is very much the problem that
has been discussed in the preceding pages. It is a matter of
some importance that a number of writers, convinced of
the economic and political usefulness of Marxism, have, in
their attempts to account for the work of the 'superstruc
ture*, and in particular for the imaginative work of the arts,
turned with some consistency to what other Marxists de
scribe as an 'idealist muddle'. The difficulty comes down
to one major point, which may be introduced by CaudwelTs
definition of the value of art:

The value of art to society is that by it an emotional
adaptation is possible. Man's instincts are pressed in
art against the altered mould of reality, and by a spe
cific organization of the emotions thus generated, there
is a new attitude, an adaptation. 23

The process of this, in the artist, is thus described:

The artist is continually besieged by new feelings
as yet unformulated, he continually attempts to grasp
beauties and emotions not yet known; a tension be
tween tradition and experience is constantly felt in his
heart. Just as the scientist is the explorer of new realms
of outer reality; the artist continually discovers new
kingdoms of the heart. Both therefore are explorers,
and necessarily therefore share a certain loneliness.
But if they are individualists, it is not because they
are non-social, but precisely because they are perform
ing a social task. They are non-social only in this sense,
that they are engaged in dragging into the social world
realms at present non-social and must therefore have
a foot in both worlds. 24

What these two worlds are, in CaudwelTs view, is the basic
controversy. In Illusion and Reality, he wrote:

The link between science and art, the reason they can
live in the same language, is this: the subject of action
is the same as the subject of cognition the genotype.
The object of action is the same as the object of cogni
tionexternal reality. Since the genotype is a part of

J2g8 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

reality, although it finds itself set up against another
part of It, the two interact; there is development; man's
thought and man's society have a history. 25
It would certainly seem, at first sight, that this version of
the 'genotype* interacting with 'external reality' is some way
from Marx, and this is so not only in Caudweffs first writ
ings, but, in the phrase about *both worlds', in the late es
say on Beauty. In effect, in writing of this Mud, it would
seem that Marx's basic conception of the relation between
'the real foundation' and 'consciousness', and hence between
structure and superstructure, is being revalued. The point
emerges, in practice, as a controversy about the rdle of art,
and thence of culture (intellectual and imaginative work)
generally. There is a clear controversy between the advo
cates of 'realism' (an analytical and synthetic embodiment
of, in Engels' words, 'typical characters in typical circum
stances', where the adequate 'reflex* of reality is seen as the
purpose of art) and, on the other hand, those who add to
this an additional clause, as here in Gorki:

Myth is invention. To invent means to extract from the
sum of a given reality its cardinal idea and embody it
in imagery that is how we get realism. But if to the
idea extracted from the given reality we add complet
ing the idea by the logic of hypothesis the desired,
the possible, and thus supplement the image, we ob
tain that romanticism which is at the basis of myth,
and is highly beneficial in that it tends to provoke
a revolutionary attitude to reality, an attitude that
changes the world in a practical way. 20

This, I take it, is the advance of realism to 'socialist realism',
for it is presumably only if 'the desired, the possible' is so
cialist that the 'revolutionary attitude to reality" will be pro
voked. The process is defined by identification with a
political attachment. Otherwise, the method might be ade
quately described as 'socialist romanticism', the transforma
tion of idealism by a material content, of which West wrote.
The difficulty remains that the source of 'the desired, the
possible' has still to be defined. It is still Marxist to find this
in emergent social forces, which are already active and con-

MARXISM AND CULTURE #99

scions in the social process. But there has been a distinct
tendency, in English writers, to find 'the desired, the pos
sible' in terms of the 'inner energy' of the individual, of
which Caudwell wrote. This, while it may be an improve
ment of Marx, would seem to deny his basic proposition
about 'existence' and 'consciousness'. In fact, as we look at
the English attempt at a Marxist theory of culture, what
we see is an interaction between Romanticism and Marx,
between the idea of culture which is the major English
tradition and Marx's brilliant revaluation of it. We have to
conclude that the interaction is as yet far from complete.

in

The one vital lesson which the nineteenth century had to
learn and learn urgently because of the very magnitude of
its changes was that the basic economic organization could
not be separated and excluded from its moral and intel
lectual concerns. Society and individual experience were
alike being transformed, and this driving agency, which
there were no adequate traditional procedures to under
stand and interpret, had, in depth, to be taken into con
sciousness. Others besides Marx insisted on this, and worked
towards it, but Marx, in giving a social and historical defini
tion to the vaguer idea of Industrialism', made the decisive
contribution. The materials for restoring a whole and ade
quate consciousness of our common life were given into our
hands. Meanwhile, underlying this, the practical means of
community were being slowly learned, in experience.

Marx's emphasis has passed into the general mind, even
if his particular teaching is still inevitably controversial.
The questions we have now to ask for the validity of his
economic and political theory cannot here be discussed
relate to the Marxist impact on our thinking about culture.
The basic question, as it has normally been put, is whether
the economic element is in fact determining, I have fol
lowed the controversies on this, but it seems to me that it
is, ultimately, an unanswerable question. The shaping in
fluence of economic change can of course be distinguished,
as most notably in the period with which this book is con-

300 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

cerned. But the difficulty lies in estimating the final impor
tance of a factor which never, in practice, appears in isola
tion. We can never observe economic change in neutral
conditions, any more than we can, say, observe the exact
influence of heredity, which is only available for study
when it is already embodied in an environment. Capitalism,
and industrial capitalism, which Marx by historical analy
sis was able to describe in general terms, appeared only
within an existing culture. English society and French so
ciety are both, today, in certain stages of capitalism, but
their cultures are observably different, for sound historical
reasons. That they are both capitalist may be finally de
termining, and this may be a guide to social and political
action, but clearly, if we are to understand the cultures,
we are committed to what is manifest: the way of life as
a whole. What many of us have felt about Marxist cultural
interpretation is that it seems committed, by Marx's for
mula, to a rigid methodology, so that if one wishes to study,
say, a national literature, one must begin with the economic
history with which the literature co-exists, and then put the
literature to it, to be interpreted in its light. It is true that
on occasion one learns something from this, but, in general,
the procedure seems to involve both forcing and super
ficiality. For, even if the economic element is determining,
it determines a whole way of life, and it is to this, rather
than to the economic system alone, that the literature has
to be related. The interpretative method which is governed,
not by the social whole, but rather by the arbitrary cor
relation of the economic situation and the subject of study,
leads very quickly to abstraction and unreality, as for ex
ample in CaudwelFs description of modem poetry (that is,
since the fifteenth century) as 'capitalist poetry', 27 where
it remains to be shown that 'capitalist* is a relevant de
scription of poetry at all. It leads also to the overriding of
practical concrete judgements by generalizations, as for ex
ample in descriptions of Western European literature of
this century as 'decadent' because its social system is
judged 'decadent': a procedure which lumps together the
bad art which reflects and exploits elements of disintegra
tion, and the substantial art which, by the very seriousness

MARXISM AND CULTURE 30!

of its procedure, shows the disintegration in process, and
what it is like, in detail, to live through it. It leads also,
I think, to very doubtful descriptions of a culture as a
whole. To describe English life, thought and imagination
in the last three hundred years simply as bourgeois', to de
scribe English culture now as 'dying', is to surrender reality
to a formula. I am glad to see that this point is still con
troversial among Marxists: some arguing that in a class
society there is e a polarization of mental activity' around the
ruling class, so that if the ruling ckss is 'bourgeois' all the
mental activity is Tbowgeois'; others denying this, and ar
guing that the consciousness of a whole society is always
more diverse, and is not limited to the economically domi
nant class. 28 Whichever of these views may best accord
with Marx, it would seem that the balance of evidence
clearly lies with the latter. In al these points there would
seein to be a general inadequacy, among Marxists, In the
use of 'culture' as a term. It normally indicates, in their
writings, the intellectual and imaginative products of a so
ciety; this corresponds with the weak use of 'superstruc
ture'. But it would seem that from their emphasis on the
interdependence of all elements of social reality, and from
their analytic emphasis on movement and change, Marxists
should logically use 'culture' in the sense of a whole way of
life, a general social process. The point is not merely verbal,
for the emphasis in this latter use would make impossible
the mechanical procedures which I have criticized, and
would offer a basis for more substantial understanding. The
difficulty lies, however, in the terms of Marx's original
formulation: if one accepts 'structure' and 'superstructure',
not as the terms of a suggestive analogy, but as descrip
tions of reality, the errors naturally follow. Even if the
terms are seen as those of an analogy, they meed, as I have
tried to suggest, amendment.

One practical result of this kind of Maoist interpretation
of the past can be seen in the persistent attempts to define
the culture of the socialist future. If you get into the habit
of thinking that a bourgeois society produces, in a simple
and direct way, a bourgeois culture, then you are likely to
think that a socialist society will produce, also simply and

302 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

directly, a socialist culture, and you may think it incum
bent on you to say what it will be like. As a matter of fact,
most of the speculation about the 'socialist culture' of the
future has been no more than a Utopian habit; one cannot
take it very seriously. But the point became practical in
Russia, where, for example, the kind of literature appropri
ate to the new society has been commonly defined in ad
vance, as an authoritative prescription. If there is a habit
of thinking of the relation between literature and society as
simple and direct, such a procedure seems plausible, a
campaign for 'socialist realism' seems plausible, and of
course literature of a kind, in response to the campaign,
will always be got. But, if we are to agree with Marx that
'existence determines consciousness*, we shall not find it
easy to prescribe any particular consciousness in advance,
unless, of course (this is how in theory it is usually done)
the prescribers can somehow identify themselves with 'exist
ence'. My own view is that if, in a socialist society, the
basic cultural skills are made widely available, and the
channels of communication widened and cleared, as much
as possible has been done in the way of preparation, and
what then emerges wil be an actual response to the whole
reality, and so valuable. The other way can be seen in these
words of Lenin:

Every artist ... has a right to create freely accord
ing to his ideals, independent of anything. Only, of
course, we communists cannot stand with our hands
folded and let chaos develop in any direction it may.
We must guide this process according to a plan and
form its results. 29

There is no *of course' about it, and the growth of conscious
ness is cheapened (as in the mechanical descriptions of the
past) by being foreseen as 'chaos'. Here, it is not ultimately
a question of wise or unwise, free or totalitarian, policy; it
is, rather, a question of inadequacy in the theory of culture.
The point can be put, finally, on a wider basis. Modem
communist practice rests to a very large degree on Lenin,
and it can be argued, in this matter of the development of

MARXISM AND CULTURE 303

consciousness, that Lenin is inconsistent with Marx. Lenin
wrote, for instance:

The history of all countries shows that the working
class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop
only trade-union consciousness. 30

The working-class movement, unable to develop an ide
ology for itself , will be 'captured' either by bourgeois ide
ology* or by socialist ideology, which latter is itself created
by bourgeois intellectuals. So much depends, here, on the
ways in which Ideology' and 'consciousness* are used, but

(i) if Lenin seriously and constantly maintained that
the working class cannot create a socialist ide
ology, Marx's account of the relation between
class and ideology, and between existence and
consciousness, cannot easily be maintained;

(ii) if the 'bourgeois intelligentsia', working alone,
can create 'socialist ideology', the relation be
tween 'existence* and 'consciousness' has again to
be redefined;

(iii) if the working people are really in this helpless
condition, that they alone cannot go beyond
'trade-union consciousness' (that is, a negative
reaction to capitalism rather than a positive re
action towards socialism) , they can be regarded
as 'masses' to be captured, the objects rather
than the subjects of power. Almost anything can
then be justified.

It is not easy to discover any single judgement on these
questions which one can take as finally and authentically
Marxist. The point is vital, for it would seem to lie at the
root of a number of differences between the spirit of Marxist
criticism and certain observable aspects of communist
policy. We are interested in Marxist theory because social
ism and communism are now important. We shall, to the
degree that we value its stimulus, continue to look for its
clarification in the field of culture as a whole.

CHAPTER VI

GEORGE ORWELL

*!T is not so much a series of books, it is more like a world/ 1
Tills is Orwell, on Dickens. It is not so much a series of
books, it is more like a case/ This, today, is Orwell himself.
We have been using him, since his death, as the ground
for a general argument, but this is not mainly an argument
about ideas, it is an argument about mood. It is not that he
was a great artist, whose experience we have slowly to re
ceive and value. It is not that he was an important thinker,
whose ideas we have to interpret and examine. His interest
lies almost wholly in his frankness. With us, he inherited a
great and humane tradition; with us, he sought to apply it
to the contemporary world. He went to books, and found
in them the detail of virtue and truth. He went to experi
ence, and found in it the practice of loyalty, tolerance and
sympathy. But, in the end,

it was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were
striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into
his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped
quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions,
though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty
dust from entering along with him. 2

The dust is part of the case: the caustic dust carried by the
vile wind. Democracy, truth, art, equality,, culture: all
these we carry in our heads, but, in the street, the wind is
everywhere. The great and humane tradition is a kind of
wry joke; in the books it served, but put them down and
look around you. It is not so much a disillusion, it is more
like our actual world.

The situation is paradox: this kind of tradition, this kind
of dust. We have made Orwell the igure of this paradox:
in reacting to him we are reacting to a common situation.
England took the first shock of industrialism and its con-

GEORGE ORWELL 305

sequences, and from this it followed, on the one hand, that
the humane response was early, fine and deep the making
of a real tradition; on the other hand that the material con
stitution of what was criticized was built widely into all
our lives a powerful and committed reality. The interaction
has been long, slow and at times desperate. A man who
lives it on his own senses is subject to extraordinary pres
sures. Orwell lived it, and franHy recorded it: this is why
we attend to him. At the same time, although the situation
is common, Orwell's response was Ms own, and has to be
distinguished. Neither his affiliations, his difficulties nor Ms
disillusion need be taken as prescriptive. In the end, for
any proper understanding, it is not so much a case, it is a
series of books.

The total effect of Orwell's work is an effect of paradox.
He was a humane man who communicated an extreme of
inhuman terror; a man committed to decency who actual
ized a distinctive squalor. These, perhaps, are elements of
the general paradox. But there are other, more particular,
paradoxes. He was a socialist, who popularized a severe
and damaging criticism of the idea of socialism and of its
adherents. He was a believer in equality, and a critic of
class, who founded his later work on a deep assumption of
inherent inequality, inescapable class difference. These
points have been obscured, or are the subject of merely
partisan debate. They can only be approached, adequately,
through observation of a further paradox. He was a notable
critic of abuse of language, who himself practised certain
of its major and typical abuses. He was a fine observer of
detail, and appealed as an empiricist, while at the same
time committing himself to an unusual amount of plausible
yet specious generalization. It is on these points, inherent
in the very material of his work, that we must first con
centrate.

That he was a fine observer of detail I take for granted;
it is the great merit of that group of essays of wMch The
Art of Donald McGill is typical, and of parts of The Hood
to Wigan Pier. The contrary observation, on his general
judgements, is an effect of the total reading of his work,
but some examples may here stand as reminders:

306 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

In each variant of socialism that appeared from about
1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty and
equality was more and more openly abandoned. 8

The British Labour Party? Guild Socialism?

By the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the
main currents of political thought were authoritarian.
The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly
the moment when it became realisable. 4

England in 1945?

The first thing that must strike any outside observer is
that Socialism in its developed form is a theory con
fined entirely to the middle class. 5

A Labour Party conference? Any local party in an industrial
constituency? Trade-unions?

All left-wing parlies in the highly industrialized coun
tries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their
business to ght against something which they do not
really wish to destroy.

On what total evidence?

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from
emotions racial pride, leader worship, religious be
lief, love of war which liberal intellectuals mechani
cally write off as anachronisms, and which they have
usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to
have lost all power of action. 7

But does the shaping energy spring from these emotions
alone? Is there no other 'power of action*?

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite. 8
An irritation masquerading as a judgement?

Take, for instance, the fact that all sensitive people are
revolted by industrialism and its products. . . .

AH? By all its products?

I isolate these examples, not only to draw attention to
this aspect of Orwell's method, but also to indicate (as all

GEORGE ORWELL 3O/

but one of them do) the quality of the disillusion which
has, in bulk, been so persuasive. In many of the judgements
there is an element of truth, or at least ground for argu
ment, but Orwell's manner is normally to assert, and then
to argue within the assertion. As a literary method, the in
fluence of Shaw and Chesterton is clear.

The method has become that of journalism, and is some
times praised as clear forthright statement. Orwell, in his
discussions of language, made many very useful points
about the language of propaganda. But just as he used
plausible assertion, very often, as a means of generalization,
so, when he was expressing a prejudice, often of the same
basic kind, he moved very easily into the propagandist's
Mnd of emotive abuse:

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere
words 'Socialism* and 'Communism' draw towards
them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker,
nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature
Cure' quack, paciist and feminist in England. . . . 10

. . . vegetarians with wilting beards . . . shock-
beaded Marxists chewing polysyllables . . . birth con
trol fanatics and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. 11

Or consider his common emotive use of the adjective little':

The typical socialist ... a prim little man with a
white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often
with vegetarian leanings. . . . 12

A rather mean little man, with a white face and a bald
head, standing on a platform, shooting out slogans. 13

. . . The typical little bowler-hatted sneak Strobe's
'little man'-the little docile cit who slips "home by the
six-fifteen to a supper of cottage-pie and stewed tinned
pears. 14

In the highbrow world you 'get on', if you 'get on' at
all not so much by your literary ability as by being the
life and soul of cocktail parties and kissing the bums
of verminous little lions. . . * 15

308 CIILTUBE ANB SOCIETY

Of course, this can be laughed at, and one will only be
annoyed if one is a socialist, nudist, feminist, commuter, or
so on. But I agree with Orwell that good prose is closely
connected with liberty, and with the social possibility of
truth. I agree with him also (and so assemble this evidence)
that

modem writing at its worst . . . consists in gumming
together long strips of words wMch have already been
set in order by someone else, and making the results
presentable by sheer humbug. 16

To overlook this practice in Orwell himself would be ridicu
lous and harmful.

Now, in normal circumstances, any writer who at all
frequently wrote in the manner of the examples quoted
might be simply disregarded. Yet I see this paradox, this
permission of such writing by a man who accepted the
standards which condemn it, as part of the whole paradox
of Orwell, which I wish to describe. He is genuinely baffling
until one inds the key to the paradox, which I will caE the
paradox of the exile. For Orwell was one of a significant
number of men who, deprived of a settled way of living, or
of a faith, or having rejected those which were inherited,
find virtue in a land of improvised living, and in an assertion
of independence. The tradition, in England, is distin
guished. It attracts to itself many of the liberal virtues;
empiricism, a certain integrity, frankness. It has also, as
the normally contingent virtue of exile, certain qualities of
perception: in particular, the ability to distinguish inade
quacies in the groups which have been rejected. It gives,
also, an appearance of strength, although this is largely
illusory. The qualities, though salutary, are largely nega
tive; there is an appearance of hardness (he austere criti
cism of hypocrisy, complacency, self-deceit) , but this is
usually brittle, and at times hysterical; the substance of
community is lacking, and the tension, in men of high
quality, is very great. Alongside the tough rejection of com
promise, which gives the tradition its virtue, is the felt social
impotence, the inability to form extending relationships.

GEORGE ORWELL 309

D. H. Lawrence, still the most intelligent of these men in
our time, knew this condition and described it. Orwell may
also have known it; at least he lived the rejections with a
thoroughness that holds the attention.

The virtues o Orwell's writing are those we expect, and
value, from this tradition as a whole. Yet we need to make a
distinction between exile and vagrancy; there is usually a
principle in exile, there is always only relaxation in va
grancy. Orwell, in different parts of his career, is both exile
and vagrant. The vagrant, in literary terms, is the reporter*,
and, where the reporter is good, Ms work has the merits of
novelty and a certain specialized kind of immediacy. The
reporter is an observer, an intermediary: it is unlikely that
he will understand, in any depth, the life about which lie
is writing (the vagrant from his own society, or his own
class, looking at another, and still inevitably from the out
side) , But a restless society very easily accepts this kind of
achievement: at one level the report on the curious or the
exotic; at another level, when the class or society is nearer
the reporter's own, the perceptive critique. Most of Orwell's
early work is of one of these two kinds (Down and Out in
Paris and London; The Road to Wigan Pier). The early
novels, similarly, are a kind of fictionalized report: even the
best of them, Coming up for Air, has more of the qualities
of the virtuoso reporter (putting himself in the place of the
abstract, representative figure) than of the intensity of full
imaginative realization. We listen to, and go about with,
Orwell's Mr Bowling; Orwell, for the most part, is evidently
present, offering his report.

Now, it would be absurd to blame Orwell for this Va
grant* experience; he had good reasons for rejecting the
ways of life normally open to him. But he saw that the
rejection had in the end to be ratified by some principle:
this was the condition of vagrancy becoming exile, which,
because of Ms quality, he recognized as finer. The principle
he chose was socialism, and Homage to Catalonia is still a
moving book (quite apart from the political controversy it
involves) because it is a record of the most deliberate at
tempt he ever made to become part of a believing commu
nity. Nor can such praise be modified because the attempt,

310 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

in continuing terms, failed. While we are right to question

the assertion of self-sufficiency, by vagrant and exile alike,
we have also to recognize the complexity of what is being
rejected and of what can be found. Orwell, in exploring this
complexity, did work of real value.

But the principle, though affirmed, could not now (Or
well concluded) carry him directly through to actual com
munity. It could, in fact, only be lived in controversy. Or
well's socialism became the exile's principle, which he
would at any cost keep inviolate. The cost, in practice, was
a partial abandonment of his own standards: he had often
to curse, wildly, to keep others away, to avoid being con
fused with them. He did not so much attack socialism,
which was safe in his mind, as socialists, who were there
and might involve him. What he did attack, in socialism,
was its disciplines, and, on this basis, he came to concen
trate his attack on communism. His attacks on the denial
of liberty are admirable; we have all, through every loyalty,
to defend the basic liberties of association and expression,
or we deny man. Yet, when the exile speaks of liberty, he is
in a curiously ambiguous position, for while the rights in
question may be called individual, the condition of their
guarantee is inevitably social. The exile, because of his own
personal position, cannot finally believe in any social guar
antee; to him, because this is the pattern of his own living,
almost all association is suspect. He fears it because he does
not want to be compromised (this is often his virtue, be
cause he is so quick to see the perfidy which certain com
promises involve) . Yet he fears it also because he can see
no way of confirming, socially, his own individuality; this,
after all, is the psychological condition of the self-exile.
Thus in attacking the denial of liberty he is on sure ground;
he is wholehearted in rejecting the attempts of society to
involve him. When, however, in any positive way, he has
to affirm liberty, he is forced to deny its inevitable social
basis: all he can fall back on is the notion of an atomistic
society, which will leave individuals alone. 'Totalitarian' de
scribes a certain kind of repressive social control, but, also,
any real society, any adequate community, is necessarily a
totality. To belong to a community is to be a part of a

GEORGE ORWELL 311

whole, and, necessarily, to accept, while helping to define,
its disciplines. To the exile, however, society as such is to
talitarian; he cannot commit himself, he is bound to stay
out.

Yet Orwell was at the same time deeply moved by what
he saw of avoidable or remediable suffering and poverty,
and he was convinced that the means of remedy are social,
involving commitment, involving association, and, to the
degree that he was serious, involving himself. In Ms essay
Writers and Leviathan, which he wrote for a series in Poli
tics and Letters, Orwell recognized this kind of deadlock,
and his solution was that in such circumstances the writer
must divide: one part of himself uncommitted, the other
part involved. This indeed is the bankruptcy of exile, yet it
was, perhaps, inevitable. He could not believe (it is not a
matter of intellectual persuasion; it is a question of one's
deepest experience and response) that any settled way of
living exists in which a man's individuality can be socially
confirmed. The writer's problem, we must now realize, is
only one aspect of this general problem, which has cer
tainly, in our own time, been acute. But because we have
accepted the condition of exile, for a gifted individual, as
normal, we have too easily accepted the Orwel kind of
analysis as masterly. It is indeed a frank and honest report,
and our kind of society has tied this knot again and again;
yet what is being recorded, in Orwell, is the experience of
a victim: of a man who, while rejecting the consequences
of an atomistic society, yet retains deeply, in himself, its
characteristic mode of consciousness. At the easy levels this
tension is mediated in the depiction of society as a racket;
a man may even join in the racket, but he tells himself that
he has no illusions about what he is doinghe keeps a secret
part of himself inviolate. At the more difficult levels, with
men of Orwell's seriousness, this course is impossible, and
the tension cannot be discharged, The consequent strain is
indeed desperate; this, more than any objective threat, is
the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four,

A Marxist dismisses Orwell as 'petty bourgeois', but this,
while one sees what it means, is too shallow. A man cannot
be interpreted in terms of some original sin of class; he is

CTJLTUBE AND SOCIETY

where he Is, and with the feelings he has; his life has to be
lived with his own experience, not with someone else s. The
only point about class, where OrweE is concerned, is that he
wrote extensively about the English working class, and that
this, because it has been influential, has to be revalued. On
such matters, Orwell is the reporter again: he is often
sharply observant, often again given to plausible generali
zation. In thinking, from his position, of the working class
primarily as a class, he assumed too readily that observation
of particular working-class people was an observation of all
working-class behaviour. Because, however, he looked at
people at all, he is often nearer the truth than more ab
stract left-wing writers. His principal failure was inevitable:
he observed what was evident, the external factors, and
only guessed at what was not evident, the inherent patterns
of feeling. This failure is most obvious in its consequences:
that he did come to think, half against his will, that the
working people were really helpless, that they could never
finaly help themselves.

In Animal Farm, the geniality of mood, and the existence
of a long tradition of human analogies in animal terms,
allow us to overlook the point that the revolution that is
described is one of animals against men. The men (the old
owners) were bad, but the animals, left to themselves,
divide into the pigs (the hypocritical, hating politicians
whom Orwell had always attacked) and the others. These
others have many virtues strength, dumb loyalty, kindli
ness, but there they are: the simple horse, the cynical don
key, the cackling hens, the bleating sheep, the silly cows.
It is fairly evident where Orwell's political estimate lies:
his sympathies are with the exploited sheep and the other
stupid animals, but the issue of government lies between
drunkards and pigs, and that is as far as things can go. In
Nineteen Eighty-Four, the same point is clear, and the
terms are now direct, The hated politicians are in charge,
while the dumb mass of 'proles' goes on in very much its
own ways, protected by its very stupidity. The only dissent
comes from a rebel intellectual: the exile against the whole
system. Orwell puts the case in these terms because this is
how he really saw present society, and Nineteen Eighty-

GEOEGE ORWELL 313

Four is desperate because Orwell recognized that on such a
construction the exile could not win, and then there was
no hope at all. Or rather:

If there was hope, it must lie in the proles. . . .Every
where stood the same solid unconquerable figure,
made monstrous by work and child-bearing, toiling
from birth to death and still singing. Out of those
mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day
come. You were the dead; theirs was the future. But
you could share in that future if you kept alive the
mind. . . , 17

This is the conclusion of any Marxist intellectual, in specifi
cally Marxist terms, but with this difference from at any
rate some Marxists: that the proles now, like the animals,
are "monstrous' and not yet 'conscious' one day they will
be so, and meanwhile the exile keeps the truth alive. The
only point I would make is that this way of seeing the
working people is not from fact and observation, but from
the pressures of feeling exiled: other people are seen as an
undifferentiated mass beyond one, the 'monstrous* figure.
Here, again, is the paradox: that the only class in which
you can put any hope is written off, in present terms, as
hopeless.

I maintain, against others who have criticized Orwell,
that as a man he was brave, generous, frank and good, and
that the paradox which is the total effect of his work is not
to be understood in solely personal terms, but in terms of
the pressures of a whole situation. I would certainly insist
that his conclusions have no general validity, but the fact
is, in contemporary society, that good men are driven again
and again Mo his kind of paradox, and that denunciation
of them Tie . , . runs shrieking into the arms of the capi
talist publishers with a couple of horror comics which bring
him fame and fortune' 18 is arrogant and crass. We have,
rather, to try to understand, in the detail of experience, how
the instincts of humanity can break down under pressure
into an inhuman paradox; how a great and humane tradi
tion can seem at times, to all of us, to disintegrate into a
caustic dust.

CONCLUSION

THE Mstory of the Idea of culture Is a record of our reac
tions, in thought and feeling, to the changed conditions of
our common life. Our meaning of culture is a response to
the events which our meanings of industry and democracy
most evidently define. But the conditions were created and
have been modified by men. Record of the events Mes else
where, in our general history. The history of the idea of
culture is a record of our meanings and our definitions, but
these, in turn, are only to be understood within the context
of our actions.

The idea of culture is a general reaction to a general and
major change in the conditions of our common life. Its basic
element is its effort at total qualitative assessment. The
change in the whole form of our common life produced, as
a necessary reaction, an emphasis on attention to this
whole form. Particular change will modify an habitual dis
cipline, shift an habitual action. General change, when it
has worked itself clear, drives us back on our general de
signs, which we have to learn to look at again, and as a
whole. The worMng-out of the idea of culture is a slow
reach again for control.

Yet the new conditions, which men have been striving to
understand, were neither uniform nor static. On the con
trary, they have, from the beginning, contained extreme
diversity of situation, in a high and moving tension. The
idea of culture describes our common inquiry, but our con
clusions are diverse, as our starting points were diverse. The
word, culture, cannot automatically be pressed into service
as any kind of social or personal directive. Its emergence,
in its modern meanings, marks the effort at total qualitative
assessment, but what it indicates is a process, not a con
clusion. The arguments which can be grouped under its
heading do not point to any inevitable action or affiliation.
They define, in a common field, approaches and conclu-

CONCLUSION 315

sions. It is left to us to decide which, if any, we shall take

up, that will not turn in our hands.

In each of the three major issues, those of Industry, of
Democracy and of Art, there have been three main phases
of opinion. In industry, there was the first rejection, alike of
machine-production and of the social relations embodied
in the factory system. This was succeeded by a phase of
growing sentiment against the machine as such, in isolation.
Thirdly, in our own period, machine production came to be
accepted, and major emphasis transferred to the problem
of social relations within an industrial system of production.

In the question of democracy, the first phase was one of
concern at the threat to minority values with the coming of
popular supremacy: a concern which was emphasized by
general suspicion of the power of the new masses. This, in
turn, was succeeded by a quite different tendency, in which
emphasis fell on the idea of community, of organic society,
as against the dominant individualistic ethic and practice.
Thirdly, in our own century, the fears of the first phase
were strongly renewed, in the particular context of what
came to be called mass democracy in the new world of
mass communications.

In the question of art, the first emphasis fell, not only on
the independent value of art, but on the importance to the
common life of the qualities which it embodied. The con
tingent element of defiant exile passed into the second
phase, in which the stress fell on art as a value in itself,
with at times an open separation of this value from common
life. Thirdly, emphasis came to be placed on a deliberate
effort towards the reintegration of art with the common lif e
of society: an effort which centred around the word 'com
munication'.

In these three questions I have listed the phases of opin
ion in the order in which they appeared, but of course
opinion is persistent, and whether in relation to industry, to
democracy or to art, each of the three phases could easily
be represented from the opinions of our own day. Yet it is
possible in retrospect to see three main periods, within each
of which a distinct emphasis is paramount. In the first
period, from about 1790 to 1870, we find the long effort to

316 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

compose a general attitude towards the new forces of in
dustrialism and democracy; it is in this period that the
major analysis is undertaken and the major opinions and
descriptions emerge. Then, from about 1870 to 1914, there
is a breaking-down into narrower fronts, marked by a par
ticular specialism in attitudes to art, and, in the general
field, by a preoccupation with direct politics. After 1914
these definitions continue, but there is a growing preoccu
pation, approaching a climax after 1945, with the issues
raised not only by the inherited problems but by new prob
lems arising from the development of mass media of com
munication and the general growth of large-scale organiza
tions.

A great deal of what has been written in each of these
three periods retains its relevance and importance. In par
ticular, it is impossible to over-emphasize our debt to the
first great critical period which gave us, in relation to these
problems, the greater part of our language and manner of
approach. From all the periods, indeed, certain decisive
statements stand. Yet even as we learn, we realize that the
world we see through such eyes is not, although it resem
bles, our world. What we receive from the tradition is a set
of meanings, but not all of these will hold their significance
if, as we must, we return them to immediate experience. I
have tried to make this return, and I will set down the
variations and new definitions that have followed from this,
as a personal conclusion.

Mass and Masses

We now regularly use both the idea of *the masses',
and the consequent ideas of 'mass-civilization 7 , *mass-
democracy*, 'mass-commuDdcation' and others. Here, I
think, lies a central and very difficult issue which more than
any other needs revision.

Masses was a new word for mob, and it is a very signifi
cant word. It seems probable that three social tendencies
joined to confirm its meaning. First, there was the concen
tration of population in the industrial towns, a physical
massing of persons which the great increase in total popula-

CONCLUSION 317

tion accentuated, and which has continued with continuing
urbanization. Second, there was the concentration of work
ers into factories: again, a physical massing, made neces
sary by machine-production; also, a social massing, in the
work-relations made necessary by the development of large-
scale collective production. Third, there was the conse
quent development of an organized and self-organizing
working class: a social and political massing. The masses,
in practice, have been any of these particular aggregates,
and because the tendencies have been interrelated, it has
been possible to use the term with a certain unity. And
then, on the basis of each tendency, the derived ideas have
arisen: from urbanization, the mass meeting; from the
factory, in part in relation to the workers, but mainly in
relation to the things made, mass-production; from the
working class, mass-action. Yet, masses was a new word
for mob, and the traditional characteristics of the mob were
retained in its significance: gullibility, fickleness, herd-
prejudice, lowness of taste and habit. The masses, on this
evidence, formed the perpetual threat to culture. Mass-
thinking, mass-suggestion, mass-prejudice would threaten
to swamp considered individual thinking and feeling. Even
democracy, which had both a classical and a liberal reputa
tion, would lose its savour in becoming mass-democracy.

Now mass-democracy, to take the latest example, can be
either an observation or a prejudice; sometimes, indeed, it
is both. As an observation, the term draws attention to cer
tain problems of a modem democratic society which could
not have been foreseen by its early partisans. The existence
of immensely powerful media of mass-communication is at
the heart of these problems, for through these public opin
ion has been observably moulded and directed, often by
questionable means, often for questionable ends. I shall
discuss this issue separately, in relation to the new means
of communication.

But the term mass-democracy is also, evidently, a preju
dice. Democracy, as in England we have interpreted it, is
majority rule. The means to this, in representation and free
dom of expression, are generally approved. But, with uni
versal suffrage, majority rule will, if we believe in the exist-

l8 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

ence o the masses, be mass-rale. Further, if the masses
axe, essentially, the mob, democracy will be mob-rule. This
will hardly be good government, or a good society; it will,
rather, be the rule of lowness or mediocrity. At this point,
which it is evidently very satisfying to some thinkers to
reach, it is necessary to ask again; who are the masses? In
practice, in our society and in this context, they can hardly
be other than the working people. But if this is so, it is clear
that what is in question is not only gullibility, fickleness,
herd-prejudice, or lowness of taste and habit. It is also, from
the open record, the declared intention of the working peo
ple to alter society, in many of its aspects, in ways which
those to whom the franchise was formerly restricted deeply
disapprove. It seems to me, when this is considered, titiat
what is being questioned is not mass-democracy, but de
mocracy. If a majority can be achieved in favour of these
changes, the democratic criterion is satisfied. But if you
disapprove of the changes you can, it seems, avoid open
opposition to democracy as such by inventing a new cate
gory, mass-democracy, which is not such a good thing at
all. The submerged opposite is class-democracy, where de
mocracy will merely describe the processes by which a
ruling class conducts its business of ruling. Yet democracy,
as interpreted in England in this century, does not mean
this, So, if change reaches the point where it deeply hurts
and cannot be accepted, either democracy must be denied
or refuge taken in a new term of opprobrium. It is clear
that this confusion of the issue cannot be tolerated. Masses
= majority cannot be glibly equated with masses = mob.

A difficulty arises here with the whole concept of masses.
Here, most urgently, we have to return the meanings to
experience. Our normal public conception of an individual
person, for example, is 'the man in the street'. But nobody
feels himself to be only the man in the street; we all know
much more about ourselves than that. The man in the street
is a collective image, but we know, all the time, our own
difference from him. It is the same with *the public', which
includes us, but yet is not us. 'Masses' is a little more com
plicated, yet similar. I do not think of my relatives, friends,
neighbours, colleagues, acquaintances, as masses; we none

CONCLUSION 319

of us can or do. The masses are always the others, whom
we don't know, and can't know. Yet now, in our kind of
society, we see these others regularly, in their myriad varia
tions; stand, physically, beside them. They are here, and
we are here with them. And that we are with them is of
course the whole point. To other people, we also are masses.
Masses are other people.

There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing
people as masses. In an urban industrial society there are
many opportunities for such ways of seeing. The point is
not to reiterate the objective conditions but to consider,
personally and collectively, what these have done to our
thinking. The fact is, surely, that a way of seeing other
people which has become characteristic of our kind of so
ciety, has been capitalized for the purposes of political or
cultural exploitation. What we see, neutrally, is other peo
ple, many others, people unknown to us. In practice, we
mass them, and interpret them, according to some conven
ient formula. Within its terms, the formula will hold. Yet it
is the formula, not the mass, which it is our real business to
examine. It may help us to do this if we remember that we
ourselves are all the time being massed by others. To the
degree that we find the formula inadequate for ourselves,
we can wish to extend to others the courtesy of acknowl
edging the unknown.

I have mentioned the political formula by means of
which it seems possible to convert the majority of one's fel
low human beings into masses, and thence into something
to be hated or feared. I wish now to examine another for
mula, which underlies the idea of mass-communication.

Mass-communication

The new means of communication represent a major
technical advance. The oldest, and still the most important,
is printing, which has itself passed through major technical
changes, in particular the coming of the steam-driven ma
chine press in 1811, and the development of ever faster
cylinder and rotary presses from 1815. The major advances
in transport, by road, rail, sea and air, themselves greatly

320 CULTUHE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

affected printing: at once in the collection of news and in
the wide and quick distribution of the printed product
The development of the cable, telegraph and telephone
services even more remarkably facilitated the collection of
news. Then, as new media, came sound broadcasting, the
cinema and television.

We need to look again at these familiar factual elements
if we are to be able adequately to review the idea of 'mass-
communication' which is their product. In sum, these
changes have given us more and normally cheaper books,
magazines and newspapers; more bills and posters; broad
casting and television programmes; various kinds of film.
It would be difficult, I think, to express a simple and definite
judgement of value about all these very varied products, yet
they are all things that need to be valued. My question is
whether the idea of 'mass-communication 7 is a useful for
mula for this.

Two preliminary points are evident: first, that there is a
general tendency to confuse the techniques themselves with
the uses to which, in a given society, they have been put;
second, that, in considering these uses, our argument is
commonly selective, at times to an extreme degree.

The techniques, in my view, are at worst neutral. The
only substantial objection that is made to them is that they
are relatively impersonal, by comparison with older tech
niques serving the same ends. Where the theatre presented
actors, the cinema presents the photographs of actors.
Where the meeting presented a man speaking, the wireless
presents a voice, or television a voice and a photograph.
Points of this kind are relevant, but need to be carefully
made. It is not relevant to contrast an evening spent watch
ing television with an evening spent in conversation, al
though this is often done. There is, I believe, no form of
social activity which the use of these techniques has re
placed. At most, by adding alternatives, they have allowed
altered emphases in the time given to particular activities.
But these alterations are obviously conditioned, not only
by the techniques, but mainly by the whole circumstances
of the common life. The point about impersonality often
carries a ludicrous rider. It is supposed, for instance, that it

CONCLUSION 321

is an objection to listening to wireless talks or discussions
that the listener cannot answer the speakers back. But the
situation is that of almost any reader; printing, after all,
was the first great impersonal medium. It is as easy to send
an answer to a broadcast speaker or a newspaper editor as
to send one to a contemporary author; both are very much
easier than to try to answer Aristotle, Burke or Marx. We
fail to realize, in this matter, that much of what we call
communication is, necessarily, no more in itself than trans
mission; that is to say, a one-way sending. Reception and
response, which complete communication, depend on other
factors than the techniques.

What can be observed as a fact about the development
of these techniques is a steady growth of what I propose to
call multiple transmission. The printed book is the first great
model of this, and the other techniques have followed. The
new factor, in our own society, is an expansion of the poten
tial audience for such transmissions, so great as to present
new kinds of problem. Yet it is clear that it is not to this
expansion that we can properly object, at least without
committing ourselves to some rather extraordinary politics.
The expansion of the audience is due to two factors: first,
the growth of general education, which has accompanied
the growth of democracy; second, the technical improve
ments themselves. It is interesting, in the light of the earlier
discussion of "masses', that this expansion should have been
interpreted by the phrase *mass-commuBication*.

A speaker or writer, addressing a limited audience, is
often able to get to know this audience well enough to feel
a directly personal relationship with them which can affect
his mode of address. Once this audience has been expanded,
as with everything from books to televised parlour-games
it has been expanded, this is clearly impossible. It would
be rash, however, to assume that this is necessarily to Ms
and the audience's disadvantage. Certain types of address,
notably serious art, argument and exposition, seem indeed
to be distinguished by a quality of impersonality which
enables them frequently to survive their immediate occa
sion. How far this ultimate impersonality may be dependent
on a close immediate relationsMp is in fact very difficult to

322 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

assess. But It is always unlikely that any such speaker or
writer will use, as a model for communication, any concept
so crude as masses'. The idea of mass-communication, it
would seem, depends very much more on the intention of
the speaker or writer, than on the particular technique
employed.

A speaker or writer who knows, at the time of his ad
dress, that it will reach almost immediately several million
persons, is faced with an obviously difficult problem of in
terpretation. Yet, whatever the difficulty, a good speaker or
writer will be conscious of his immediate responsibility to
the matter being communicated. He cannot, indeed, feel
otherwise, if he is conscious of himself as the source of a
particular transmission. His task is the adequate expression
of this source, whether it be of feeling, opinion or informa
tion. He will use for this expression the common language,
to the limit of his particular skill. That this expression is
then given multiple transmission is a next stage, of which he
may well be conscious, but which cannot, of its nature, af
fect the source. The difficulties of expressing this source-
difficulties of common experience, convention and language
are certainly always his concern. But the source cannot in
any event be denied, or he denies himself.

Now if, on this perennial problem of communication, we
impose the idea of masses, we radically alter the position,
The conception of persons as masses springs, not from an
inability to know them, but from an interpretation of them
according to a formula. Here the question of the intention
of the transmission makes its decisive return. Our formula
can be that of the rational being speaking our language. It
can be that of the interested being sharing our common
experience. Or and it is here that 'masses' will operate it
can be that of the mob: gullible, ficHe, herdlike, low in
taste and habit. The formula, in fact, will proceed from our
intention. If our purpose is art, education, the giving of
information or opinion, our interpretation will be in terms of
the rational and interested being. If, on the other hand, our
purpose is manipulation the persuasion of a large number
of people to act, feel, think, know, in certain ways the con
venient formula will be that of the masses.

CONCLUSION 323

There is an important distinction to be drawn here be
tween source and agent. A man offering an opinion, a
proposal, a feeling, of course normally desires that other
persons will accept this, and act or feel in the ways that he
defines. Yet such a man may be properly described as a
source, in distinction from an agent, whose characteristic is
that his expression is subordinated to an undeclared inten
tion. He is an agent, and not a source, because the intention
lies elsewhere. In social terms, the agent will normally in
fact be a subordinate of a government, a commercial firm,
a newspaper proprietor. Agency, in the simple sense, is
necessary in any complex administration. But it is always
dangerous unless its function and intention are not only
openly declared but commonly approved and controlled. If
this is so, the agent becomes a collective source, and he will
observe the standards of such expression if what he is re
quired to transmit is such that he can wholly acknowledge
and accept it re-create it in his own person. Where he
cannot thus accept it for himself, but alows himself to be
persuaded that it is in a fit form for others presumably
inferiors and that it is his business merely to see that it
reaches them effectively, then he is in the bad sense an
agent, and what he is doing is inferior to that done by the
poorest kind of source. Any practical denial of the relation
between conviction and communication, between experi
ence and expression, is morally damaging alike to the indi
vidual and to the common language.

Yet it is certainly true, in our society, that many men,
many of them intelligent, accept, whether in good or bad
faith, so dubious a role and activity. The acceptance in bad
faith is a matter for the law, although we have not yet gone
very far in working out this necessary common control. The
acceptance in good faith, on the other hand, is a matter of
culture. It would clearly not be possible unless it appeared
to be ratified by a conception of society which relegates the
majority of its members to mob-status. The idea of the
masses is an expression of this conception, and the idea of
mass-communication a comment on its functioning. This is
the real danger to democracy, not the existence of effective
and powerful means of multiple transmission. It is less a

324 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

product of democracy than its denial, springing from that
half -world of feeling in which we are invited to have our
being. Where the principle of democracy is accepted, and
yet its ful and active practice feared, the mind is lulled into
an acquiescence, which is yet not so complete that a fitful
conscience, a defensive irony, cannot visit it. 'Democracy
would be all right/ we can come to say, *it is indeed what
we personally would prefer, if it were not for the actual
people. So, in a good cause if we can find it, in some other
if we can not, we will try to get by at a level of communica
tion which our experience and training tell us is inferior.
Since the people are as they are, the thing will do.* But it is
as well to face the fact that what we are really doing, in
such a case, is to cheapen our own experience and to adul
terate the common language.

Mass-observation

Yet the people are as they are, the objection is returned,,
Of course the masses are only other people, yet most other
people are, on the evidence, a mob. In principle, we would
wish it not to be so; in practice, the evidence is clear.

This is the negative side of the idea of mass-communica
tion. Its evidence is collected under the title of mass-culture,
or popular culture. It is important evidence, and much of it
is incontrovertible. There remains, however, the question of
its interpretation. I have said that our arguments on this
matter are normally selective, often to an extreme degree.
I will try now to illustrate this.

We are faced with the fact that there is now a great deal
of bad art, bad emterfaininent, bad journalism, bad adver
tisement, bad argument. We are not likely to be diverted
from this conclusion by the usual diversionary arguments.
Much that we judge to be bad is known to be bad by its
producers. Ask any journalist, or any copywriter, if he will
now accept that famous definition: 'written by morons for
morons*. Will he not reply that in fact it is written by
skilled and intelligent people for a public that hasn't the
time, or hasn't the education, or hasn't, let's face it, the
intelligence, to read anything more complete, anything more

CONCLUSION 325

careful, anything nearer the known canons of exposition or
argument? Had we not better say, for simplicity, anything
good? Good and bad are hard words, and we can, of course,
find easier ones. The strip newspaper, the beer advertise
ment, the detective novel it is not exactly that they are
good, but they are good of their (possibly bad) kind; they
have the merits at least of being bright, attractive, popular.
Yet, clearly, the strip newspaper has to be compared with
other kinds of newspaper; the beer advertisement with
other kinds of description of a product; the detective novel
with other novels. By these standards not by reference to
some ideal quality, but by reference to the best things that
men exercising this faculty have done or are doing we are
not likely to doubt that a great deal of what is now pro
duced, and widely sold, is mediocre or bad.

But this is said to be popular culture. The description has
a ready-made historical thesis. After the Education Act of
1870, a new mass-public came into being, literate but un
trained in reading, low in taste and habit. The mass-culture
followed as a matter of course. I think always, when I hear
this thesis, of an earlier one, from the second half of the
eighteenth century. Then, the decisive date was between
1730 and 1740, and what had emerged, with the advance of
the middle classes to prosperity, was a new middle-class
reading public. The immediate result was that vulgar phe
nomenon, the novel. As a matter of fact there is in both
theses a considerable element of truth. If the former is not
now so commonly mentioned, it is only because it would be
indiscreet, in a situation where 'good* and 'middle class* are
equivalent terms. And of course we can properly see the
earlier situation in its true perspective. We can see that what
the rise of the middle classes produced was not only the
novel but many other things good and bad. Further, now
that the bad novels are all out of print, and the good ones
are among our classics, we see that the novel itself, while
certainly a phenomenon, cannot be lightly dismissed as
vulgar. Of the situation after 1870 we are not able to speak
so clearly. For one thing, since the emergence as a whole
still divides us, we can resent the cultural situation for
political reasons and not realize this. For another, since the

326 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

period lias not fallen into settled history, we can be much
more subjective in our selection of evidence.

1870 is in fact very questionable as a decisive date.
There had been widespread literacy much earlier than
this, the bad popular press is in fact also earlier. The result
of the new educational provision was in part an actual in
crease in literacy, in part an evening-tip between the fortu
nate places and the unfortunate. The increase is certainly
large enough to be important, but it was no kind of sudden
opening of the flood-gates. In itself, it is far from enough
to account for the institution of the now characteristic
features of popular culture.

Further, we need to remember that the new institutions
were not produced by the working people themselves. They
were, rather, produced for them by others, often (as most
notably with the cheap newspaper and commercial adver
tisement on a large scale) for conscious political or com
mercial advantage. Such things in this sphere as the work
ing people produced for themselves (radical newspapers,
political pamphlets and publicity, trade-union banners
and designs) were, if by no means always good, at least
quite different in important respects. Again, it is wrong to
see the new institutions as catering only for the new class.
The new types of newspaper and advertisement were and
are much more widely received. If the masses are to be
defined as those for whom these institutions now cater, and
by whom they are now received with apparent satisfaction,
then the masses extend far beyond the categories of, say,
the manual workers, or those whose education has been
restricted to an elementary stage. I make this point because
'masses = working and lower-middle class' is so commonly
confused with 'masses = mob*. The mob, if there is one, is at
almost everyone's elbow; it may, indeed, be even nearer
than thato

And if this is so of the new newspapers and advertise
ments, it is even more true of the other bad work which has
been noted, in the novel, in the theatre, in the cinema, in
the wireless and television programmes. If, in this kind of
entertainment, there has been a continual decline of stand
ards, then it is not from 1870 that we shall date this, but

CONCLUSION 327

at least from 1740. As a matter of fact, 1 see little evidence
why the backward dating should stop there, but then I am
not so sure about die continual decline in standards. The
multiplication of transmission, and the discovery of power
ful media, seem to me mainly to have emphasized and
made more evident certain long-standing tastes and means
of satisfying them. I shall return to this point when I have
made a further observation about our practices of selection.

In the matter of selection, there are two main points.
First, it is clear that in an anxiety to prove their case, which
is indeed an important one if the badness is not to go un
challenged, the contemporary historians of popular culture
have tended to concentrate on what is bad and to neglect
what is good. If there are many bad books, there are also an
important number of good books, and these, like the bad
books, circulate much more widely than in any previous
period. If the readers of bad newspapers have increased in
number, so have the readers of better newspapers and
periodicals, so have the users of public libraries, so have
students in al kinds of formal and informal adult education.
The audiencies for serious music, opera and ballet have
increased, in some cases to a remarkable degree. Attend
ances at museums and exhibitions have, in general, steadily
risen. A significant proportion of what is seen in the cinemas,
and of what is heard on the wireless, is work of merit. In
every case, certainly, the proportions are less than we could
desire, but they are not negligible.

Secondly, it is important to remember that, in judging a
culture, it is not enough to concentrate on habits which
coincide with those of the observer. To the highly literate
observer there is always a temptation to assume that read
ing plays as large a part in the lives of most people as it
does in his own. But if he compares his own kind of read
ing with the reading-matter that is most widely distributed,
he is not really comparing levels of culture. He is, in fact,
comparing what is produced for people to whom reading is
a major activity with that produced for people to whom it
is, at best, minor. To the degree that he acquires a sub
stantial proportion of his ideas and feelings from what he
reads he will assume, again wrongly, that the ideas and

328 CULTTJBE AND SOCIETY

feelings of the majority will be similarly conditioned. But,
for good or ill, the majority of people do not yet give read
ing this importance in their lives; their ideas and feelings
are, to a large extent, still moulded by a wider and more
complex pattern of social and family life. There is an evi
dent danger of delusion, to the highly literate person, if he
supposes that he can judge the quality of general living by
primary reference to the reading artifacts. He will, in par
ticular, be driven to this delusion if he retains, even in its
most benevolent form, the concept of the majority of other
people as 'masses', whom he observes as a kind of block.
The error resembles that of the narrow reformer who sup
poses that farm labourers and village craftsmen were once
uneducated, merely because they could not read. Many
highly educated people have, in fact, been so driven in on
their reading, as a stabilizing habit, that they fail to notice
that there are other forms of skilled, intelligent, creative
activity: not only the cognate forms of theatre, concert and
picture-gallery; but a whole range of general skills, from
gardening, metalwork and carpentry to active politics. The
contempt for many of these activities, which is always la
tent in the highly literate, is a mark of the observers' limits,
not those of the activities themselves. Neglect of the extraor
dinary popularity of many of these activities, as evidence
of the quality of living in contemporary society, is the result
of partisan selection for the reasons given.

This point comes to be of particular importance when we
remember that the general tendency of modem develop
ment has been to bring many more levels of culture within
the general context of literacy than was ever previously the
case. A number of tastes which would formerly have been
gratified in pre-literate and therefore largely unrecorded
ways are now catered for and even fostered in print. Or, to
put it in another way, the historical counterpart of a mod
ern popular newspaper, in its informing function, is not an
earlier minority newspaper, but that complex of rumour and
travellers' tales which then served the majority with news of
a kind. This is not to surrender the finest literacy we have,
which at all times offers a standard for the newly literate

CONCLUSION 329

functions. But, equally, to look at the matter in this way
helps us to keep a just sense of proportion.

Our problem is one of adapting our social training to a
widely literate culture. It is clear that the highest standards
of literacy in contemporary society depend on a level of
instruction and training far above that which is commonly
available. For this reason it is still much too early to con
clude that a majority culture is necessarily low in taste. The
danger of such a judgement is that it offers a substitute
righteousness the duty of defending a standard against
the mob. Right action is not of this kind, but is a matter of
ensuring that the technical changes which have made our
culture more dependent on literate forms are matched by a
proportionate increase in training for literacy in its full
sense. It is obvious that we have allowed the technical
changes to keep far ahead of the educational changes, and
the reasons for this neglect, which in its own terms is so
plainly foolish, He in a combination of interest and inertia,
deeply rooted in the organization of society. An interpreta
tion of the majority as a mob has served, paradoxically, to
still or weaken the most active consciences in this matter.
Loutishness is always easy, and there can be few things
more loutish than to turn, at the end of a long framing, and
sneer at those who are just entering on it, and who, har
assed and insecure, are making the inevitable mistakes.

Such a view might settle the matter if we could be sure
that our only problem was to ensure that educational pro
vision matched the extension of literacy. A generation of
work would lie ahead of us, but the path at least would be
clear. Yet evidently such questions are not settled within a
specialized field. The content of education, as a role, is the
content of our actual social relations, and will only change
as part of a wider change. Further, the actual operation of
the new techniques is extremely complicated, in social
terms, because of their economic bearings. The technical
changes made necessary a great increase in the amount
and concentration of capital, and we are still on the upward
curve of this increase, as is most evident in the manage
ment of newspapers and television. These facts have led, in
our society, to an extreme concentration of production of

330 CXJLTTJKE AND SOCIETY 1 780-1950

work of this kind, and to extraordinary needs and oppor
tunities for controlling its distribution. Our new services
tend to require so much capital that only a very large audi
ence can sustain them. This in itself is not a difficulty; the
potential audience is there. But everything depends on the
attitude of those who control these services to such an audi
ence. Our broadcasting corporation, for example, holds, in
general, a reasonable interpretation of its particular respon
sibilities in this situation, even if this is no more surely
founded than in a vestigial paternalism. Yet we are con
stantly being made aware how precarious this interpreta
tion must be, under the pressures which come from a
different attitude. The scale of capital involved has given an
entry to a kind of person who, a hundred years ago, would
never have thought of running a newspaper or a theatre.
The opportunity to exploit the difficulties of a transitional
culture was open, and we have been foolish enough to allow
it to be widely taken. The temptation to make a profit out of
ignorance or inexperience is present in most societies. The
existence, in our own, of powerful media of persuasion and
suggestion made it virtually irresistible. The cheapjack,
whether he is the kind of vagrant who attached himself to
Huckleberry Finn, or the more settled individual of our own
society, always interprets his victims as an ignorant mob;
this, to him, is his justification. It is a question for society,
however, whether it will allow such an interpretation and
its consequent activities, not merely to lead the fugitive ex
istence of a vagrant, but, as now, to establish itself in some
of the seats of power, with a large and settled material
organization.

The ways of controlling such activities are well known;
we lack only the will. All I am concerned to point out is
that the cheapjack has had allies of a surprising kind. He
has an ally in whoever concedes his interpretation of his
fellow-beings. He has an ally, also, in that old kind of demo
crat who rested on the innate nobility of man. The delusions
which led to this unholy alliance are of a complementary
kind. The old democrat is often too sure of man's natural
nobility to concern himself with the means of its common
assurance. The new sceptic observes what happens when

CONCLUSION 331

such means are not assured, and seeks an explanation in
man's natural baseness. The failure, in each case, is a failure
of consciousness of change. The old rural culture, which is
so widely (and sometimes sentimentally) admired, rested
on generations of experience within a general continuity
of common condition. The speed and magnitude of the
changes which broke up this settlement were never fully
realized, and, even if they had been, the search for a new
common control was bound to be slow. It is now becoming
clear, from all kinds of evidence, that a society can, if it
chooses, train its members in almost any direction, with
only an occasional failure. The failures will be interpreted
in terms of virtue or of recidivism, according to circum
stances. But what is important is not that we are all mal
leableany culture and any civilization depend on this
but the nature and origin of the shaping process. The con
tributions of old democrat and new sceptic are alike irrele
vant to this decisive question; and the cheapjack has
jumped in on the irrelevance and the general confusion.
The local newspaper, of all things, stands as a most im
portant piece of controlling evidence. For it is read by
people at least as simple, at least as poorly educated, as the
readers of the worst strip paper. Yet in method and content
it is still remarkably like the older journalism of minority
reading, even to its faults. The devices which are said to be
necessary to reach the ordinary mind are not employed, yet
the paper is commonly read and understood. This is a case
which, because of special circumstances, fflumines the
general problem. Produced for a known community on a
basis of common interest and common knowledge, the local
newspaper is not governed by a *mass* interpretation. Its
communication, in fact, rests on a community, in sharp
contrast with most national newspapers, which are pro
duced for a market, interpreted by 'mass' criteria. The
methods of the popular newspaper do not rest on the fact
that simple people read it, for then the local paper would
hardly be read or understood at all. They rest on the fact
that it and its readers are organized in certain kinds of eco
nomic and social relation. If we realize this we will concen
trate our attention, not on man's natural goodness or bad-

332 CULTURE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

ness, but on the nature of the controlling social relations.
The idea of the masses, and the technique of observing
certain aspects of mass-behaviour selected aspects of a
'public' rather than the balance of an actual community-
formed the natural ideology of those who sought to control
the new system and to profit by it. To the degree that we
reject this kind of exploitation, we shall reject its ideology,
and seek a new definition of communication.

Communication and Community

Any governing body will seek to implant the Bright* ideas
in the minds of those whom it governs, but there is no
government in exile. The minds of men are shaped by their
whole experience, and the most skilful transmission of ma
terial which this experience does not confirm will fail to
communicate. Communication is not only transmission; it
is also reception and response. In a transitional culture it
will be possible for skilful transmission to affect aspects of
activity and belief, sometimes decisively. But, confusedly,
the whole sum of experience will reassert itself, and inhabit
its own world. Mass-communication has had its evident
successes, in a social and economic system to which its
methods correspond. But it has failed, and will continue to
fail, when its transmissions encounter, not a confused un
certainty, but a considered and formulated experience.

Observing this, the practitioners of mass-communication
rum to the improvement of what they call their science:
that is to say, to scraps of applied psychology and linguistic.
It is of the greatest importance to attend to what they are
doing, but at the same time any real theory of communica
tion is a theory of community. The techniques of mass-
communication will be irrelevant to a genuine theory of
communication, to the degree that we judge them to be
conditioned, not by a community, but by the lack or in
completeness of a community. It is very difficult to think
clearly about communication, because the pattern of our
thinking about community is, normally, dominative. We
tend, in consequence, if not to be attracted, at least to be
preoccupied by dominative techniques. Communication

CONCLUSION 333

becomes a science of penetrating the mass mind and of
registering an impact there. It is not easy to think along
different Mnes.

It is easy to recognize a dominative theory if, for other
reasons, we think it to be bad. A theory that a minority
should profit by employing a majority in wars of gain is
easily rejected. A theory that a minority should profit by
employing a mass of wage-slaves is commonly rejected. A
theory that a minority should reserve the inheritance of
human knowledge to itself, and deny it to the majority, is
occasionally rejected. But (we say) nobody, or only a few
bad people, can be found to support such theories. We are
all democrats now, and such things are unthinkable. As a
matter of fact, mass-communication has served and is in
some places still serving all the theories I have mentioned.
The whole theory of mass-communication depends, essen
tially, on a minority in some way exploiting a majority. We
are not all democrats now.

Yet "exploiting', of course, is a tendentious word. What
of the case where a minority is seeking to educate a ma
jority, for that majority's ultimate good? Such minorities
abound, seeking to educate majorities in the virtues of
capitalism, communism, culture, contraception. Surely here
mass-communication is necessary and urgent, to bring
news of the good life, and of the ways to get it, and the
dangers to avoid in getting it, to the prejudiced, servile,
ignorant and multiplying masses? If workmen are impover
ishing themselves and others by restrictive practices; if
peasants are starving themselves and others by adhering to
outdated ways; if men and women are growing up in ig
norance, when so much is known; if families are breeding
more children than can be fed: surely, urgently, they must
be told this, for their own good?

The objection, as a matter of fact, is not to telling anyone
anything. It is a question of how one tells them, and how
one would expect to be told oneself. Nor is this merely a
matter of politeness, of politeness being the best policy. It
is really a matter of how one would be told oneself: telling
as an aspect of living; learning as an element of experience.
The very failure of so many of the items of transmission

334 CULTUKE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

which I have listed is not an accident, but the result of a
failure to understand communication. The failure is due to
an arrogant preoccupation with transmission, which rests on
the assumption that the common answers have been found
and need only to be applied. But people will (damn them,
do you say?) learn only by experience, and this, normally,
is uneven and slow. A governing body, in its impatience,
will often be able to enforce, by any of a number of kinds
of pressure, an apparent conformity. This can on occasion
be made substantial by subsequent experience; such a fact
is the sharpest temptation to any dominative policy that
events will substantiate what at first people would not ac
cept. As a matter of politics, this is perhaps the most dif
ficult contemporary issue. As a matter of communication,
however, such a point only substantiates what has already
been said; it will be the experience that teaches. In a
society which lacks the experience of democratic practice,
a zealous refonning minority will often be forced to take
this kind of chance. Yet, even here, it has great dangers;
the process of learning depends so much on the conscious
need to learn, and such a need is not easily imposed on
anyone.

It is clear, on the other hand, that even in contemporary
democratic communities the dominative attitude to com
munication is still paramount. Almost every kind of leader
seems to be genuinely afraid of trusting the processes of
majority discussion and decision. As a matter of practice this
is usually whittled away to the merest formula. For this, the
rooted distrust of the majority, who are seen as masses or
more politely as the public, is evidently responsible. Demo
cratic theory remains theory, and this practical scepticism
breeds the theoretical scepticism which is again becoming,
even in our own society, dangerously marked. The conse
quences are unsatisfactory from most points of view. If
people cannot have official democracy, they will have un
official democracy, in any of its possible forms, from the
armed revolt or riot, through the 'unofficial* strike or restric
tion of labour, to die quietest but most alarming form a
general sullenness and withdrawal of interest. Faced with
this set of facts, it is always possible to fall back on the other

CONCLUSION- 335

part of the 'mass' interpretation; to see these symptoms as

'proving* the imfitness of the massesthey will riot, they
will strike, they will not take an interest such is the nature
of that brute, the mob. I am arguing, on the contrary, that
these characteristic marks of our civilization are not inter-
pretable in this mode; that they are, rather, symptoms of a
basic failure in communication. It is possible to say -this, and
to conclude that the answer lies in educational projects, the
feeding of information, or a new publicity drive. But this
is to go on thinking of communication as transmission alone,
a renewal, perhaps by new means, of the long dominative
effort. The point is very difficult to see, in practice, when
a group is certain that its case is right and urgent, and that
for their own. good, and urgently, people must be brought to
recognize this.

Yet the uneasy symptoms are, precisely, a response to a
dominative organization. In a revolt, in most riots, in many
strikes, it is a positive response: the assertion of a different
land of answer. The answer that is then finally adopted will
depend on the balance of power. But often it is less formu
lated than this: a confused, vague reaction against the
dominative habit. What I have called sullenness is the ob
vious example of this. I think it is now a very prevalent
reaction to the dominative kinds of mass-communication.
People don't, of course, believe all they read in the news
papers, and this, often, is just as well. But for one small
area of discriminating reading, almost always the product of
training, there is a huge area of general suspicious disbelief,
which, while on particular occasions it may be prophylactic,
is as a general habit enfeebling. Inertia and apathy have
always been employed by the governed as a comparatively
safe weapon against their governors. Some governing bodies
will accept this, as at least being quiet. But in our own
society, because of the way we produce, there is so large a
degree of necessary common interest and mutual effort that
any widespread withdrawal of interest, any general mood
of disbelief, can quite certainly be disastrous. The answer to
it, however, does not He in exhortation. It lies, rather, in
conceding the practice of democracy, which alone can sub
stantiate the theory. It lies, in terms of communication, in

336 CULTURE AKD SOCIETY

adopting a different attitude to transmission, one which
will ensure that its origins are genuinely multiple, that all
the sources have access to the common channels. This is
not possible until it is realized that a transmission is always
an offering, and that this fact must determine its mood:
it is not an attempt to dominate, but to communicate, to
achieve reception and response. Active reception, and living
response, depend in their turn on an effective community
of experience, and their quality, as certainly, depends on a
recognition of practical equality. The inequalities of many
kinds which still divide our community make effective com
munication difficult or impossible. We lack a genuinely
common experience, save in certain rare and dangerous mo
ments of crisis. What we are paying for this lack, in every
kind of currency, is now sufficiently evident. We need a
common culture, not for the sake of an abstraction, but
because we shall not survive without it.

I have referred to equality, but with some hesitation, for
the word is now commonly confusing. The theoretical em
phasis on equality, in modern society, is in general an op
ponent response; it is less a positive goal than an attack on
inequality, which has been practically emphasized in exact
proportion to equalitarian ideas. The only equality that is
important, or indeed conceivable, is equality of being. In
equality in the various aspects of man is inevitable and
even welcome; it is the basis of any rich and complex Me.
The inequality that is evil is inequality which denies the
essential equality of being. Such inequality, in any of its
forms, in practice rejects, depersonalizes, degrades in
grading, other human beings. On such practice a structure
of cruelty, exploitation and the crippling of human energy
is easily raised. The masses, the dominative mood, the re
jection of culture, are its local testaments in human theory.

A common culture is not, at any level, an equal culture.
Yet equality of being is always necessary to it, or common
experience will not be valued, A common culture can place
no absolute restrictions on entry to any of its activities: this
is the reality of the claim to equality of opportunity. The
claim to such opportunity is of course based on the desire
to become unequal, but this can mean any of a number of

CONCLUSION 337

things. A desired inequality which will in practice deny the

essential equality of being, is not compatible with a culture
in common. Suet inequalities, which cannot be afforded,
have continually to be defined, out of the common experi
ence. But there are many inequalities which do not harm
this essential equality, and certain of these are necessary,
and need to be encouraged. The point becomes practical in
examples, and I would suggest these. An inequality in other
than personal property that is to say an inequality in
ownership of the means of Me and production may be
found intolerable because in practice it may deny the basic
processes of equality of being. Inequality in a particular
faculty, however, or unequal developments of knowledge,
skill and effort, may not deny essential equality: a physicist
will be glad to learn from a better physicist, and will not,
because he is a good physicist, think himself a better man
than a good composer, a good chess-player, a good carpen
ter, a good runner. Nor, in a common culture, will he think
himself a better human being than a child, an old woman,
or a cripple, who may lack the criterion (in itself inade
quate) of useful service. The kind of respect for oneself
and one's work, which is necessary to continue at all, is a
different matter from a claim to inequality of being, such as
would entitle one to deny or dominate the being of another.
The inequalities which are intolerable are those which lead
to such denial or domination.

But some activities are better than others, the objection
is returned. An insistence on equality may be, in practice, a
denial of value. I have followed the course of this objection
with some care, for it is important indeed. Is not a teacher
to dominate a child, so that he may learn? Some facts will
be right, and others wrong: the teacher must insist on their
distinction, whether or not it is right to dominate. I agree,
but most good teaching, in fact, is a transmission of the
skills of discrimination alongside statements of the conclu
sions and judgements which have been received, and which
have, provisionally, to be used. This offering, alike of a
statement to be confirmed, and of the means of decision, is
the proper working of general communication. A child will
only learn the skills if he practises them; a teacher will

338 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

only be skilled if he is aware of the process while offering
the product. The utmost emphasis on distinctions of value,
In all the things that man makes and does, is not an em
phasis on inequality of being. It is, rather, a common proc
ess of learning, which, indeed, will only ever be under
taken if the primary concession of equality of being, which
alone can remove such a process from the dominative
sphere, is made. Nobody can raise anybody else's cultural
standard. The most that can be done is to transmit the skills,
which are not personal but general human property, and at
the same time to give open access to all that has been made
and done. You cannot stop a child reading a horror comic,
or a man reading a strip newspaper, by order (unless you
attempt the indignity of physical power over him), or even
by argument, by telling him that it is bad. You can only
give him the opportunity of learning what has been gener
ally and commonly learned about reading, and see that he
has access to al that is available to be read. In the end, and
rightly, his choice will in any case be his own. A man's
concern for value for standards, as we sayproperly ex
presses itself in the effort towards a community of experi
ence on which these standards can rest. Further, if his con
cern for value is something more than dogma, he will hold
himself open to learn other vaules, in the shaping of a new
common experience. The refusal of either course is a petu
lant timidity. If one cannot believe in men, and in their
common efforts, it is perhaps only in caricature that one
can believe in oneself.

Culture and Which Way of Life?

We live in a transitional society, and the idea of culture,
too often, has been identified with one or other of the forces
which the transition contains. Culture is the product of the
old leisured classes who seek now to defend it against new
and destructive forces. Culture is the inheritance of the new
rising class, which contains the humanity of the future; this
class seeks, now, to free it from its restrictions. We say
things like this to each other, and glower. The one good
thing, it seems, is that all the contending parties are keen

CONCLUSION 339

enough on culture to want to be identified with it. But
then, we are none of us referees in this; we are all in the
game, and playing in one or other direction.

I want to say something about the idea of 'working-class
culture', because this seems to me to be a key issue in our
own time, and one in which there is a considerable element
of misunderstanding. I have indicated already that we can
not fairly or usefully describe the bulk of the material
produced by the new means of communication as 'working-
class culture'. For neither is it by any means produced ex
clusively for this class, nor, in any important degree, is it
produced by them. To this negative definition we must add
another: that 'working-class culture*, in our society, is not
to be understood as the small amount of 'proletarian'
writing and art which exists. The appearance of such work
has been useful, not only in its more self-conscious forms,
but also in such material as the post-Industrial ballads,
which were worth collecting. We need to be aware of this
work, but it is to be seen as a valuable dissident element
rather than as a culture. The traditional popular culture of
England was, if not annihilated, at least fragmented and
weakened by the dislocations of the Industrial Revolution.
What is left, with what in the new conditions has been
newly made, is small in quantity and narrow in range. It
exacts respect, but it is in no sense an alternative culture.

This very point of an alternative is extremely difficult, in
terms of theory. If the major part of our culture, in the sense
of intellectual and imaginative work, is to be caled, as the
Marxists call it, bourgeois, it is natural to look for an alter
native culture, and to call it proletarian. Yet it is very doubt
ful whether Bourgeois culture* is a useful term. The body
of intellectual and imaginative work which each generation
receives as its traditional culture is always, and necessarily,
something more than the product of a single class. It is not
only that a considerable part of it will have survived from
much earlier periods than the immediately pre-existing
form of society; so that, for instance, literature, philosophy
and other work surviving from before, say, 1600, cannot be
taken as 'bourgeois'. It is also that, even within a society in
which a particular class is dominant, it is evidently possible

340 CULTUBE A3STD SOCIETY

both for members of other classes to contribute to the com
mon stock, and for such contributions to be unaffected by
or in opposition to the ideas and values of the dominant
class. The area of a culture, it would seem, is usually pro
portionate to the area of a language rather than to the area
of a class. It is true that a dominant class can to a large ex
tent control the transmission and distribution of the whole
common inheritance; such control, where it exists, needs to
be noted as a fact about that class. It is true also that a
tradition is always selective, and that there will always be a
tendency for this process of selection to be related to and
even governed by the interests of the class that is dominant.
These factors make it likely that there will be qualitative
changes in the traditional culture when there is a shift of
class power, even before a newly ascendant class makes its
own contributions. Points of this kind need to be stressed,
but the particular stress given by describing our existent
culture as bourgeois culture is in several ways misleading.
It can, for example, seriously mislead those who would now
consider themselves as belonging to the dominant class. If
they are encouraged, even by their opponents, to think of
the existing culture (in the narrow sense) as their particu
lar product and legacy, they will deceive themselves and
others. For they will be encouraged to argue that, if their
class position goes, the culture goes too; that standards de
pend on the restriction of a culture to the class which, since
it has produced it, alone understands it. On the other hand,
those who believe themselves to be representatives of a new
rising class will, if they accept the proposition of bourgeois
culture', either be tempted to neglect a common human in
heritance, or, more intelligently, be perplexed as to how,
and how much of, this bourgeois culture is to be taken over.
The categories are crude and mechanical in either position.
Men who share a common language share the inheritance
of an intellectual and literary tradition which is necessarily
and constantly revalued with every shift in experience. The
manufacture of an artificial 'working-class culture*, in op
position to this common tradition, is merely foolish. A
society in which the working class had become dominant
would, of course, produce new valuations and new contri-

CONCLUSION 341

butions. But the process would be extremely complex, be
cause of the complexity of the inheritance, and nothing is
now to be gained by diminishing this complexity to a crude
diagram.

The contrast between a minority and a popular culture
cannot be absolute. It is not even a matter of levels, for such
a term implies distinct and discontinuous stages, and this is
by no means always the case. In Russian society in the nine
teenth century one finds perhaps the clearest example of a
discontinuous culture within recent history; this is marked,
it should be noted, by a substantial degree of rejection of
even the common language by the ruling minority. But in
English society there has never been this degree of separa
tion, since English emerged as the common language. There
has been marked unevenness of distribution, amounting at
times to virtual exclusion of the majority, and there has
been some unevenness of contribution, although in no
period has this approached the restriction of contribution to
members of any one class. Further, since the beginning of
the nineteenth century it has been difficult for any observer
to feel that the care of intellectual and imaginative work
could be safely entrusted to, or identified with, any existing
social or economic class. It was in relation to this situation
that the very idea of culture was, as we have seen, de
veloped.

The most difficult task confronting us, in any period
where there is a marked shift of social power, is the compli
cated process of revaluation of the inherited tradition. The
common language, because in itself it is so crucial to this
matter, provides an excellent instance. It is clearly of vital
importance to a culture that its common language should
not decline in strength, richness and flexibility; that it
should, further, be adequate to express new experience,
and to clarify change. But a language like English is still
evolving, and great harm can be done to it by the imposi
tion of crude categories of class. It is obvious that since the
development, in the nineteenth century, of the new defini
tion of 'standard English*, particular uses of the common
language have been taken and abused for the purposes of
class distinction. Yet the dialect which is normally equated

342 CULTOBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

with standard English has no necessary superiority over
other dialects. Certain of the grammatical clarifications
have a common importance, but not all even of these. On
the other hand, certain selected sounds have been given a
cardinal authority which derives from no known law of
language, but simply from the fact that they are habitually
made by persons who, for other reasons, possess social and
economic influence. The conversion of this Mnd of arbitrary
selection into a criterion of 'good 7 or 'correct' or 'pure' Eng
lish is merely a subterfuge. Modern communications make
for the growth of uniformity, but the necessary selection
and clarification have been conducted, on the whole, on
grounds quite irrelevant to language. It is still thought, for
instance, that a double negative (1 don't want none') is
incorrect English, although millions of English-speaking
persons use it regularly: not, indeed, as a misunderstanding
of the rule, which they might be thought too ignorant to
apprehend; but as the continuation of a habit which has
been in the language continuously since Chaucer. The
broad V, in such words as 'class', is now taken as the mark
of an 'educated person', although till the eighteenth cen
tury it was mainly a rustic habit, and as such despised. Or
'ain't', which in the eighteenth century was often a mark of
breeding, is now supposed to be a mark of vulgarity: in
both cases, the valuation is the merest chance. The extraor
dinary smugness about aspirates, vowel-sounds, the choice
of this or that synonym ('couch' *sofa*), which has for so
long been a normal element of middle-class humour, is,
after all, not a concern for good English, but parochialism.
(The current controversy about what are called *U* and
*non-IT speech habits clearly illustrates this; it is an aspect,
not of major social differences, but of the long difficulty of
drawing the lines between the upper and lower sections of
the middle class.) Yet, while this is true, the matter is com
plicated by the fact that in a society where a particular class
and hence a particular use of the common language is domi
nant a large part of the literature, carrying as it does a body
of vital common experience, will be attracted to the domi
nant language mode. At the same time, a national literature,
as English has never ceased to be, will, while containing this

CONCLUSION 343

relation, contain also elements of the whole culture and
language. If we are to understand the process of a selective
tradition, we shall not think o exclusive areas of culture but
of degrees of shifting attachment and interaction, which a
crude theory either of class or of standards is incompetent
to interpret.

A culture can never be reduced to its artifacts while it is
being lived. Yet the temptation to attend only to external
evidence is always strong. It is argued, for instance, that the
working class is becoming ^bourgeois*, because it is dressing
like the middle class, living in semi-detached houses, ac
quiring cars and washing-machines and television sets. But
it is not t>ouTgeois* to possess objects of utility, nor to enjoy
a high material standard of living. The working class does
not become bourgeois by owning the new products, any
more than the bourgeois ceases to be bourgeois as the ob
jects he owns change in kind. Those who regret such a de
velopment among members of the working class are the
victims of a prejudice. An admiration of the 'simple poor*
is no new thing, but it has rarely been found, except as a
desperate rationalization, among the poor themselves. It is
the product either of satiety or of a judgement that the
material advantages are purchased at too high a human
cost. The first ground must be left to those who are sated;
the second, which is more important, is capable of a false
transference. If the advantages were 'bourgeois' because
they rested on economic exploitation, they do not continue
to be Bourgeois' if they can be assured without such ex
ploitation or by its diminution. The worker's envy of the
middle-class man is not a desire to be that man, but to have
the same kind of possessions. We all like to think of our
selves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely diffi
cult for the English middle class to suppose that the work
ing class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself.
I am afraid this must be unlearned. The great majority of
English working people want only the middle-class material
standard and for the rest want to go on being themselves.
One should not be too quick to call this vulgar materialism.
It is wholly reasonable to want the means of life in such
abundance as is possible. This is the materialism of material

344 CU1LTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

provision, to which we are all, quite rightly, attentive. The
working people, who have felt themselves long deprived
of such means in any adequacy, intend to get them and to
keep them if they can. It would need more evidence than
this to show that they are becoming vulgar materialists, or
that they are becoming ^bourgeois'.

The question then, perhaps, is whether there is any
meaning left in bourgeois? Is there any point, indeed, in
continuing to think in class terms at al? Is not industrialism,
by its own momentum, producing a culture that is best
described as classless? Such questions, today, command a
significant measure of assent, but again, while drawing sup
port from the crudities of certain kinds of class interpreta
tion, they rest, essentially, on an external attitude alike to
culture and to class. If we think of culture, as it is important
to do, in terms of a body of intellectual and imaginative
work, we caa see that with the extension of education the
distribution of this culture is becoming more even, and, at
the same time, new work is being addressed to a public
wider than a single class. Yet a culture is not only a body of
intellectual and imaginative work; it is also and essentially
a whole way of life. The basis of a distinction between
bourgeois and working-class culture is only secondarily in
the field of intellectual and imaginative work, and even here
it is complicated, as we have seen, by the common elements
resting on a common language. The primary distinction is
to be sought in the whole way o life, and here, again, we
must not confine ourselves to such evidence as housing,
dress and modes of leisure. Industrial production tends to
produce uniformity in such matters, but the vital distinc
tion lies at a different level The crucial distinguishing ele
ment in English life since the Industrial Revolution is not
language, not dress, not leisure for these indeed will tend
to imiformity. The crucial distinction is between alternative
ideas of the nature of social relationship.

'Bourgeois* is a signii cant term because it marks that
version of social relationship which we usualy call individ
ualism; that is to say, an idea of society as a neutral area
within which each individual is free to pursue his own de
velopment and Ms own advantage as a natural right. The

CONCLUSION 345

course of recent history is marked by a long fighting retreat
from this idea in its purest form, and the latest defenders
would seem to the earliest to have lost almost the entire
field. Yet the interpretation is still dominant: the exertion of
social power is thought necessary only in so far as it will
protect individuals in this basic right to set their own course.
The classical formula of the retreat is that, in certain de
fined ways, no individual has a right to harm others. But,
characteristically, this harm has been primarily interpreted
in relation to the individual pursuit no individual has a
right to prevent others from doing this kind of thing.

The reforming bourgeois modification of this version of
society is the idea of service, to which I shall return. But
both this idea and the individualist idea can be sharply
contrasted with the idea that we properly associate with the
working class: an idea which, whether it is called com
munism, socialism or cooperation, regards society neither
as neutral nor as protective, but as the positive means for
all kinds of development, including individual development.
Development and advantage are not individually but com
monly interpreted. The provision of the means of life will,
alike in production and distribution, be collective and mu
tual. Improvement is sought, not in the opportunity to es
cape from one's class, or to make a career, but in the general
and controlled advance of all. The human fund is regarded
as in all respects common, and freedom of access to it as a
right constituted by one's humanity; yet such access, in
whatever kind, is common or it is nothing. Not the individ
ual, but the whole society, will move.

The distinction between these versions of society has
been blurred by two factors: the idea of service, which is
the great achievement of the Victorian middle class, and
is deeply inherited by its successors; and the complication
of the working-class idea by the fact that England's posi
tion as an imperial power has tended to limit the sense of
community to national (and, in the context, imperialist)
lines. Further, the versions are blurred by a misunderstand
ing of the nature of class. The contending ideas, and the
actions which follow from them, are the property of that
part of a group of people, similarly circumstanced, which

346 CULTUBE AND SOCIETY

has become conscious of its position and of its own attitude
to this position. Class feeling is a mode, rather than a uni
form possession of all the individuals who might, objec
tively, be assigned to that class. When we speak, for in
stance, of a working-class idea, we do not mean that all
working people possess it, or even approve of it. We mean,
rather, that this is the essential idea embodied in the or
ganizations and institutions which that class creates: the
working-class movement as a tendency, rather than all
working-class people as individuals. It is foolish to interpret
Individuals in rigid class terms, because class is a collective
mode and not a person. At the same time, in the interpreta
tion of ideas and institutions, we can speak properly in class
terms. It depends, at any time, on which kind of fact we
are considering. To dismiss an individual because of his
class, or to judge a relationship with him solely in class
terms, is to reduce humanity to an abstraction. But, also,
to pretend that there are no collective modes is to deny the
plain facts.

We may now see what is properly meant by 'working-
class culture*. It is not proletarian art, or council houses, or
a particular use of language; it is, rather, the basic col
lective idea, and the institutions, manners, habits of thought
and intentions which proceed from this. Bourgeois culture,
similarly, is the basic individualist idea and the institutions,
manners, habits of thought and intentions which proceed
from that. In our culture as a whole, there is both a con
stant interaction between these ways of life and an area
which can properly be described as common to or under
lying both. The working class, because of its position, has
not, since the Industrial Revolution, produced a culture in
the narrower sense. The culture which it has produced,
and which it is important to recognize, is the collective
democratic institution, whether in the trade unions, the co
operative movement or a political party. Working-class cul
ture, in the stage through which it has been passing, is
primarily social (in that it has created institutions) rather
than individual (in particular intellectual or imaginative
work) . When it is considered in context, it can be seen as a
very remarkable creative achievement.

CONCLUSION 347

To those whose meaning o culture is intellectual or im
aginative work, such an achievement may be meaningless.
The values which are properly attached to such work can,
at times, seem overriding. On this, I would only point out
that while it may have seemed reasonable to Burke to an
ticipate the trampling down of learning by the irruption of
the 'swinish multitude*, this has not in fact happened, and
the swinish multitude itself has done much to prevent it
happening. The record of the working-class movement in
its attitudes to education, to learning and to art is on the
whole a good record. It has sometimes wrongly interpreted,
often neglected where it did not know. But it has never
sought to destroy the institutions of this kind of culture; it
has, on the contrary, pressed for their extension, for their
wider social recognition, and, in oiar own time, for the ap
plication of a larger part of our material resources to their
maintenance and development. Such a record will do more
than stand comparison with that of the class by which the
working class has been most actively and explicitly op
posed. This, indeed, is the curious incident of the swine in
the night. As the light came, and we could look around, it
appeared that the trampling, which we had all heard, did
not after all come from them.

The Idea of Community

The development of the idea of culture has, throughout,
been a criticism of what has been called the bourgeois idea
of society. The contributors to its meaning have started
from widely different positions, and have reached widely
various attachments and loyalties. But they have been alike
in this, that they have been unable to think of society as a
merely neutral area, or as an abstract regulating mecha
nism. The stress has fallen on the positive function of so
ciety, on the fact that the values of individual men are
rooted in society, and on the need to think and feel in
these common terms. This was, indeed, a profound and
necessary response to the disintegrating pressures which
were faced.

Yet, according to their different positions, the idea of

348 CULTURE AND SOCIETY

community, on which, all in general agree, has been dif
ferently felt and defined. In our own day we have two ma
jor interpretations, alike opposed to bourgeois liberalism,
but equally, in practice, opposed to each other. These are
the idea of service, and the idea of solidarity. These have in
the main been developed by the middle class and the work
ing class respectively. From Coleridge to Tawney the idea
of function, and thence of service to the community, has
been most valuably stressed, in opposition to the individual
ist claim. The stress has been confirmed by the generations
of training which substantiate the ethical practice of our
professions, and of our public and civil service. As against
the practice of laissez-faire,, and of self-service, this has
been a major achievement which has done much for the
peace and welfare of our society. Yet the working-class
ethic, of solidarity, has also been a major achievement, and
it is the difference of this from the idea of service which
must now be stressed.

A very large part of English middle-class education is
devoted to the training of servants. This is much more its
characteristic than a training for leadership, as the stress
on conformity and on respect for authority shows. In so far
as it is, by definition, the training of upper servants, it in
cludes, of course, the instilling of that kind of confidence
which will enable the upper servants to supervise and direct
the lower servants. Order must be maintained there, by
good management, and in this respect the function is not
service but government. Yet the upper servant is not to
think of his own interests. He must subordinate these to a
larger good, which is called the Queen's peace, or national
security, or law and order, or the public weal. This has
been the charter of many thousands of devoted lives, and
it is necessary to respect it even where we cannot agree
with it.

I was not trained to this ethic, and when I encountered
it, in late adolescence, I had to spend a lot of time trying to
understand it, through men whom I respected and who
had been formed by it. The criticism I now make of it is in
this kind of good faith. It seerns to me inadequate because
in practice it serves, at every level, to maintain and confirm

CONCLUSION 349

the status quo. This was wrong, for me, because the status

quo, in practice, was a denial of equity to the men and
women among whom I had grown up, the lower servants,
whose lives were governed by the existing distributions of
property, remuneration, education and respect. The real
personal unselfishness, which ratified the description as
service, seemed to me to exist within a larger selfishness,
which was only not seen because it was idealized as the
necessary form of a civilization, or rationalized as a natural
distribution corresponding to worth, effort and intelligence.
I could not share in these versions, because I thought, and
still think, that the sense of injustice which the lower serv
ants' felt was real and justified. One cannot in conscience
then become, when invited, an upper servant in an estab
lishment that one thus radically disapproves.

Now it is true that much of this service has gone to
improving the conditions of the lower servants', but, be
cause of its nature, this has been improvement within, a
framework which is thought, in its main lines, inviolate. I
have seen this psychology of service extend to the working-
class movement itself, until the phraseology of 'making a
man a useful citizen', 'equipping him to serve the commu
nity', has become common form. A particular climax of
this, for me, was a book called How we are Governed,
written by a left-wing democrat. It is at this point, on the
basis of a different social ethic, that one becomes awkward.

How we are Governed, as an explanation of democracy,
is an expression of the idea of service at its psychological
limit. The break through to 'How we govern ourselves* is
impossible, on the basis of such a training: the command
to conformity, and to respect for authority as such, is too
strong. Of course, having worked for improvement in the
conditions of working people, in the spirit of service, those
who are ruled by the idea of service are genuinely dis
mayed when the workers do not fully respond: when, as it
is put, they don't play the game, are lacking in team-spirit,
neglect the national interest. This has been a crisis of con
science for many middle-class democrats and socialists. Yet
the fact is that working-class people cannot feel that this is
their community in anything like the sense in which it is

35O CUXTUBE AND SOCIETY 1 780-1950

felt above them. Nor will education in their responsibilities
to a community thus conceived convince them. The idea
of service breaks down because while the upper servants
have been able to identify themselves with the establish
ment, the lower servants have not. What 'they decide is
still the practical experience of life and work.

The idea of service, ultimately, is no substitute for the
idea of active mutual responsibility, which is the other ver
sion of community. Few men can give the best of them
selves as servants; it is the reduction of man to a function.
Further, the servant, if he is to be a good servant, can never
really question the order of things; his sense of authority is
too strong. Yet the existing order is in fact subject to almost
overwhelming pressures, The break through, into what to
gether we want to make of our lives, will need qualities
which the idea of service not only fails to provide, but, in
its limitation of our minds, actively harms.

The idea of service to the community has been offered to
the working class as an interpretation of solidarity, but it
has not, in the circumstances, been fully accepted, for it is,
to them, inferior in feeling. Another alternative to solidarity
which has had some effect is the idea of individual oppor
tunity of the ladder. It has been one of the forms of service
to provide such a ladder, in industry, in education and else
where. And many working-class leaders, men in fact who
have used the ladder, have been dazzled by this alternative
to solidarity. Yet the ladder is a perfect symbol of the bour
geois idea of society, because, while undoubtedly it offers
the opportunity to climb, it is a device which can only be
used individually: you go up the ladder alone. This kind
of individual climbing is of course the bourgeois model: a
man should be allowed to better himself. The social con
science, which produced the idea of service, argued that
no greater benefit could be conferred on the working peo
ple than that this ladder should be extended to them. The
actual process of reform, in so far as it has not been gov
erned by working-class pressure, has been, in large part,
the giving of increasing opportunity to climb. Many indeed
have scrambled up, and gone off to play on the other side;
many have tried to climb and failed. Judged in each par-

CONCLUSION 351

ticular case, it seems obviously right that a working man,
or the child of a working-class family, should be enabled to
fit himself for a different kind of work, corresponding to
his ability. Because of this, the ladder idea has produced a
real conflict of values witMn the working class itself. My
own view is that the ladder version of society is objection
able in two related respects: first, that it weakens the prin
ciple of common betterment, which ought to be an absolute
value; second, that it sweetens the poison of hierarchy, in
particular by offering the hierarchy of merit as a thing dif
ferent in kind from the hierarchy of money or of birth. On
the educational ladder, the boy who has gone from a coun
cil school to Oxford or Cambridge is of course glad that he
has gone, and he sees no need to apologize for it, in either
direction. But he cannot then be expected to agree that
such an opportunity constitutes a sufficient educational re
form. A few voices, softened by the climb, may be found
to say this, which they are clearly expected to say. Yet, if
he has come from any conscious part of the working class,
such a boy will take leave to doubt the proffered version.
The education was worth the effort, but he sees no reason
why it should be interpreted as a ladder. For the ladder,
with all its extra-educational implications, is merely an im
age of a particular version of society; if he rejects the ver
sion, he will reject the image. Take the ladder image away,
and interest is returned to what is, for him, its proper ob
ject: to the making of a common educational provision; to
the work for equity in material distribution; to the process
of shaping a tradition, a community of experience, which
is always a selective organization of past and present, and
which he has been given particular opportunities to under
stand. The ladder, which is a substitute for all these things,
must be understood in all its implications; and it is impor
tant that the growing number who have had the ladder
stamped on their brows should interpret it to themselves
and to their own people, whom, as a class, it could greatly
harm. For in the end, on any reckoning, the ladder will
never do; it is the product of a divided society, and will
fall with it.

352 OTLTUBE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

The Development of a Common Culture

In its definition of the common interest as true self-
interest, in its finding of individual verification primarily in
the community, the idea of solidarity is potentially the real
basis of a society. Yet it is subject, in our time, to two im
portant difficulties. For it has been, basically, a defensive
attitude, the natural mentality of the long siege. It has in
part depended, that is to say, on an enemy; the negative
elements thus produced will have to be converted into posi
tives in a fully democratic society. This will at best be
profoundly difficult, for the feelings involved are funda
mental.

The issue can be defined as one in which diversity has to
be substantiated within an effective community which dis
poses of majority power. The feeling of solidarity is, al
though necessary, a primitive feeling. It has depended,
hitherto, on substantial identity of conditions and experi
ence. Yet any predictable civilization will depend on a wide
variety of highly specialized skills, which will involve, over
definite parts of the culture, a fragmentation of experience.
The attachment of privilege to certain kinds of skill has
been traditionally clear, and this will be very difficult to
unlearn., to the degree tihat is necessary if substantial com
munity of condition is to be assured. A culture in common,
in our own day, will not be the simple all-in-all society of
old dream. It will be a very complex organization, requir
ing continual adjustment and redrawing. At root, the feeling
of solidarity is the only conceivable element of stabilization
in so difficult an organization. But in its issue it will have
to be continually redefined, and there will be many at
tempts to enlist old feelings in the service of an emerging
sectional interest. The emphasis that I wish to place here is
that this first difficultythe compatibility of increasing spe
cialization with a genuinely common culture is only solu
ble in a context of material community and by the full
democratic process. A skill is only an aspect of a man, and
yet, at times, it can seem to comprehend his whole being.
This is one kind of crisis, and it can only be overcome as a

CONCLUSION 353

man becomes conscious that the value lie places on his skill,
the differentiation he finds in it, can only ultimately be
confirmed by his constant effort not only to confirm and
respect the skills of others, but also to confirm and deepen
the community which is even larger than the skills. The
mediation of this lies deep in personal feeling, but enough
is known to indicate that it is possible. Further, there can
be no effective participation in the whole culture merely
on the basis of the skill which any particular man may
acquire. The participation depends on common resources,
and leads a man towards others. To any individual, how
ever gifted, full participation will be impossible, for the
culture will be too complex. Yet effective participation is
certainly possible. It will, at any time, be selective from the
whole culture, and there will be difference and unevenness
in selection, as there will be in contribution. Such selection,
such unevenness, can be made compatible with an effective
community of culture, but only by genuine mutual respon
sibility and adjustment. This is the conversion of the de
fensive element of solidarity into the wider and more posi
tive practice of neighbourhood. It is, in practice, for any
man, a long conversion of the habitual elements of denial;
a slow and deep personal acceptance of extending commu
nity. The institutions of cynicism, of denial and of division
will perhaps only be thrown down when they are recog
nized for what they are: the deposits of practical failures
to live. Failure the jaunty hardness of the 'outsider' will
lose its present glamour, as the common experience moves
in a different direction. Nobody will be proud any longer
to be separate, to deny, or to ratify a personal failure in
unconcern.

The second difficulty, in the development of the idea of
solidarity., is related to the first: in that it is again a question
of achieving diversity without creating separation. Solidar
ity, as a feeling, is obviously subject to rigidities, which can
be dangerous in a period of change. The command to com
mon action is right, but there is always the danger that the
common understanding will be inadequate, and that its en
forcement will prevent or delay right action. No commu
nity, no culture, can ever be fully conscious of itself, ever

354 ClflLTUBE AND SOCIETY l/8o-195O

fully know itself. The growth of consciousness is usually
uneven, individual and tentative in nature. An emphasis of
solidarity which, by intention or by accident, stifles or
weakens such growth may, evidently, bring a deep common
harm. It is necessary to make room for, not only variation,
but even dissidence, within the common loyalty. Yet it is
difficult to feel that, even in the English working-class
movement, with its long democratic tradition, this need has
been clearly and practically recognized.

A culture, while it is being lived, is always in part un
known, in part unrealized. The making of a community is
always an exploration, for consciousness cannot precede
creation, and there is no formula for unknown experience.
A good community, a living culture, will, because of this,
not only make room for but actively encourage all and
any who can contribute to the advance in consciousness
which is the common need. Wherever we have started from,
we need to listen to others who started from a different
position. We need to consider every attachment, every
value, with our whole attention; for we do not know the
future, we can never be certain of what may enrich it; we
can only, now, listen to and consider whatever may be of
fered and take up what we can.

The practical liberty of thought and expression is less a
natural right than a common necessity. The growth of un
derstanding is so difficult that none of us can arrogate to
himself, or to an institution or a class, the right to deter
mine its channels of advance. Any educational system will
relect the content of a society; any emphasis in exploration
will follow from an emphasis of common need. Yet no sys
tem, and no emphasis, can be adequate, if they fail to allow
for real flexibility, real alternative courses. To deny these
practical liberties is to burn the common seed. To tolerate
only this or only that, according to some given formula, is
to submit to the phantasy of having occupied the future
and fenced it into fruitful or unfruitful ground. Thus, in the
working-class movement, while the clenched fist is a nec
essary symbol, the clenching ought never to be such that
the hand cannot open, and the fingers extend, to discover
and give a shape to the newly forming reality.

CONCLUSION 355

We have to plan what can be planned, according to our

common decision. But the emphasis of the idea of culture
is right when it reminds us that a culture, essentially, is
unplannable. We have to ensure the means of life, and the
means of community. But what will then, by these means,
be lived, we cannot know or say. The idea of culture rests
on a metaphor: the tending of natural growth. And indeed
it is on growth, as metaphor and as fact, that the ultimate
emphasis must be placed. Here, finally, is the area where
we have most need to reinterpret.

To rid oneself of the illusion of the objective existence of
'the masses', and to move towards a more actual and more
active conception of human beings and relationships, is in
fact to realize a new freedom. Where this can be experi
enced, the whole substance of one's tMnking is transformed.
There is a further shift in experience, cognate with this,
when we think again about human growth, and its human
tending, in a spirit other than that of the long dominative
mode. The forces which have changed and are still chang
ing our world are indeed industry and democracy. Under
standing of this change, this long revolution, lies at a level
of meaning which it is not easy to reach. We can in retro
spect see the dominative mood as one of the mainsprings of
industry: the theory and practice of man's mastering and
controlling his natural environment. We are still rephrasing
this, from experience, as we learn the folly of exploiting any
part of this environment in isolation. We are learning,
slowly, to attend to our environment as a whole, and to
draw our values from that whole, and not from its frag
mented parts, where a quick success can bring long waste.
In relation to this kind of learning, we come to realize,
again slowly, that where the dominative mood extends to
man himself, where human beings also are isolated and
exploited, with whatever temporary success, the issue in the
long run is a cancelling in spirit of the full opportunities
offered by the material gains. A knot is tied, that has come
near to strangling our whole common life, in this century.
We live in almost overwhelming danger, at a peak of our
apparent control. We react to the danger by attempting to
take control, yet still we have to unlearn, as the price of

356 CULTUKE AND SOCIETY

survival, the inherent dominative mode. The struggle for
democracy is the pattern of this revaluation, yet much that
passes as democratic is allied, in spirit, with the practice of
its open enemies. It is as if, in fear or vision, we are now all
determined to lay our hands on life and force it into our
own image, and it is then no good to dispute on the merits
of rival images. This is a real barrier in the mind, which at
times it seems almost impossible to break down: a refusal
to accept the creative capacities of life; a determination to
limit and restrict the channels of growth; a habit of think
ing, indeed, that the future has now to be determined by
some ordinance in our own minds. We project our old im
ages into the future, and take hold of ourselves and others
to force energy towards that substantiation. We do this as
conservatives, trying to prolong old forms; we do this as
socialists, trying to prescribe the new man. A large part of
contemporary resistance to certain kinds of change, which
are obviously useful in themselves, amounts to an inarticu
late distrust of this effort at domination. There is the hostil
ity to change of those who wish to cling to privilege. There
is also the hostility to one's life being determined, in a dom
inative mood masked by whatever idealism or benevolence.
This latter hostility is valuable, and needs to be distin
guished from the former with which it is often crudely
compounded. It is the chafing of any felt life against the
hands which seek to determine its course, and this, which
was always the democratic impulse, remains essential
within the new definitions of society. There are still major
material barriers to democracy, but there is also this barrier
in our minds, behind which, with an assumption of virtue,
we seek to lay hands on others, and, from our own con
structions, determine their course. Against this the idea of
culture is necessary, as an idea of the tending of natural
growth. To know, even in part, any group of living proc
esses, is to see and wonder at their extraordinary variety
and complexity. To know, even in part, the life of man, is
to see and wonder at its extraordinary multiplicity, its great
fertility of value. We have to live by our own attachments,
but we can only live fully, in common, if we grant the at
tachments of others, and make it our common business to

CONCLUSION 357

keep the channels of growth clear. Never yet, in the great
pattern o inheritance and response, have two wholly iden
tical individuals been formed. This, rather than any par
ticular image of virtue, is our actual human scale. The idea
of a common culture brings together, in a particular form
of social relationship, at once the idea of natural growth
and that of its tending. The former alone is a type of ro
mantic individualism; the latter alone a type of authoritar
ian training. Yet each, within a whole view, marks a nec
essary emphasis. The struggle for democracy is a struggle
for the recognition of equality of being, or it is nothing. Yet
only in the acknowledgement of human individuality and
variation can the reality of common government be com
prised. We stress natural growth to indicate the whole po
tential energy, rather than the selected energies which the
dominative mode finds it convenient to enlist. At the same
time, however, we stress the social reality, the tending. Any
culture, in its whole process, is a selection, an emphasis, a
particular tending. The distinction of a culture in common
is that the selection is freely and commonly made and re
made. The tending is a common process, based on common
decision, which then, within itself, comprehends the actual
variations of life and growth. The natural growth and the
tending are parts of a mutual process, guaranteed by the
fundamental principle of equality of being.

The evident problems of our civilization are too close and
too serious for anyone to suppose that an emphasis is a
solution. In every problem we need hard, detailed inquiry
and negotiation. Yet we are coming increasingly to realize
that our vocabulary, the language we use to enquire into
and negotiate our actions, is no secondary factor, but a
practical and radical element in itself. To take a meaning
from experience, and to try to make it active, is in fact our
process of growth. Some of these meanings we receive and
re-create. Others we must make for ourselves, and try to
communicate. The human crisis is always a crisis of under
standing: what we genuinely understand we can do. I have
written this book because I believe the tradition it records
is a major contribution to our common understanding, and
a major incentive to its necessary extensions. There are

358 CUI/TUHE AND SOCIETY 1780-1950

ideas, and ways of thinking, with the seeds of life in them,
and there are others, perhaps deep in our minds, with the
seeds of a general death. Our measure of success in recog
nizing these kinds, and in naming them making possible
their common recognition, may be literally the measure of
our future.

REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION

Page Note No.

xii i. Words Ancient and Modern; E. Weekley; 1926; p. 34*

PART I

CHAPTER I

(i)

4 i. Letter, 21 November 1791, to Fitzwilliam; cit. Ed

mund Burke, A Life; Philip Magnus; London, 1939;
Appendix 5; p. 348.

5 2,. Essays in Criticism; M. Arnold (1918 edn.); p. 18.

5 3. Lord Charlemont, 19 August 1797; cit. Magnus, op.

cit., p. 296,

6 4. Reflections on the Revolution in France; Edmund

Burke (World's Classics edn.), 1950; pp. 184-185.

7 5. Ibid., pp. 186-187.

8 6. Letter to a Noble Lord; Works, Vol. V, p. 186.
8 7. Reflections, p. 12.

8 8. Ibid., p. 138.

9 9. Ibid., p. 65.
9 10. Ibid., p. 95.

10 11. Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs; Works, Voi
III, p. 82.

10 12. Reflections; pp. 105-106.

11 13. Ibid., p. 107.

11 14. Thoughts on French Affairs; ibid., p. 375.

12 15. Reform of Representation in the House of Commons;

Works, Vol. VI, p. 147.

13 16. Reflections; p. 168.

13 17. Ibid., p. 156.

14 18. The Bloody Buoy; 1796; Vol. Ill, Porcupine's Works

(1801).
14 19. Porcupine's Works, Vol. XII, p. i.

14 20. Political Register, 28 February 1807.

15 21. Ibid., 15 March 1806.
15 22. Ibid., 6 December 1806.

15 23. Ibid., 12 July 1817.

16 24. Ibid., 21 November 1807.
16 25. Ibid., 14 April 1821.

360 REFERENCES

Page Nate No.
16 26. Ibid., 10 July 1824.

16 27. Ibid., 8 March 1834.

17 28. Ibid., 16 July 1808.

17 29. Ibid., 13 November 1830.

18 30. Ibid., 2 May 1812.
18 31. Ibid., 25 July 1812.

18 32. Ibid., 19 December 1818.

18 33. Ibid., 19 December 1818.

19 34. Ibid., 27 August 1825.

19 35- Lectures on the French and Belgian Revolutions, I,

p. i.

19 36. Political Register, 7 December 1833.
2,1 37. Letter to T. J. Street, 22 March 1817; Nonesuch

Coleridge; pp. 668-669.
22 38. Political Register, 8 June 1816.

(ii)

22 i. Sir Thomas More: or, Colloquies on the Progress and

Prospects of Society; Robert Southey; 2 vok., 1829;
VI, p. 132.

23 2. Ibid., p. 132.

23 3. Ibid., pp. 132-133.

24 4. The Vision of Judgment, Stanza XCVI; Poetical Works

of Lord Byron ( 1945 ) , p. 168.

24 5. Git. William Morris, Mediaevalist and Revolutionary;
M. Grennan; King's Grown Press, New York, 1945; p.
12.

24 6. Letters of Robert Southey; ed. Fitzgerald; p. 273.

25 7. Colloquies, VII, pp. 193-194.
25 8. Ibid., p. 197.

25 9- Ibid., VII, p. 170.

26 10. Ibid., p. 174.

26 11. Ibid., Vol. 2, Coll. XIII, p. 246.

26 12. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 262.

27 13. Ibid., Vol. 2, Coll. XV, pp. 424-425, et supra.
27 14. Ibid., Coll. IV, p. 79.

27 15- Ibid., Vol. 2, Coll. XV, p. 418.

27 16. Ibid., p. 420.

28 17. Ibid., VIII, p. 206.

29 18. Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing Sys

tem, with hints for the improvement of those parts of
it which are most injurious to health and morals, dedi
cated most respectfully to the British Legislature;
London, 1815; p. 5.

29 19. Ibid., pp. 10-11.

30 20. A New View of Society; London, 1813; Essay First on

the Formation of Character; repr. A New View of So-

REFERENCES 361

Page Note No.

defy and Other Writings, by Robert Owen; ed. Cole;
Everyman, 1927; p. 16.

30 21. Address prefixed to Third Essay, A New View of So-

ciety; eel Cole; pp. 8-9.

31 22. The Life of Robert: Owen, by Himself; repr. London,

1920; pp. 186-189, passim.

31 23. Ibid., pp. 122-123.

32 24. Ibid., p. 105.

32 25. A New View of Society; pp. 178-179.

CHAPTER II

37 i. Wordsworth's Poetical Works; ed. Hutchinson; Ox
ford, 1908; p. 953-

37 2. Ibid., p. 952.

38 3. Draft of The Wealth of Nations, in Adam Smith as

Student and Professor; W. R. Scott; p. 344.
38 4. Ibid., p. 345*

38 5. The Autobiography of Sir Egerton Brydges; 1834; Vol.

II, pp. 202-203.

39 6. Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas

Moore; Vol. VII, p. 46.

40 7. Conjectures on Original Composition; Edward Young;

1759; p. 12.

40 8. Ibid., p, 19-

41 9. William Make; Nonesuch edn. (Keynes); p. 664.

42 10. Ibid., p. 624.

42 11. Ibid., p. 637.

43 12. Poetical Works, p. 260.

44 13. Ibid., p. 938.

44 14. Ibid., pp. 951-952.

45 15. Ibid., pp. 93S-939-

45 16. Ibid., p. 938.

46 17. A Defence of Foetry; P. B. Shelley; repr. English

Prose of the Romantic Period ( Macintyre and Ewing);
p. 270-

47 18. Ibid., p. 271.

48 19, Letters of John Keats; ed. Forrnan; Letter 90, p. 223,

49 20. Coleridge's Essays and Lectures on Shakespeare; Ev

eryman, p. 46.
49 21. Op. cit, p. 130.
49 22. Ibid., pp. 67-68.

49 23. Ibid., p. 72.

50 24. Ibid., p. 67.

50 25. Poetical Works, p. 941.

50 26. Ibid., p. 939.

51 27. Ibid., p. 939.

52 28. Op. cit, p. 273*

362 REFERENCES

Page Note No.
52 29. Ibid., p. 274.
52 30. Ibid., p. 275.

CHAPTER III

54 i. Coleridge; repr. Mill on Bentham and Coleridge; in-

trod. F. R. Leavis; London, 1950; p. 105.

55 2. Ibid., p. 105.

55 3. Ibid., p. 105.

56 4. Ibid., p. 106.

57 5. Ibid., pp. 106-107.

58 6. Ibid., p. 107.
58 7. Ibid., p. 108.

58 8. Ibid., p. 99-

59 9. Ibid., p. 84.
59 10. Ibid., p. 63.

59 11. Cit. John Stuart Mill; K. Britton; London, 1953; p. 13.

60 12. Letters of John Stuart Mitt; ed. Elliot ( 1910); Vol. I,

p. 88.

61 13. Bentham; repr. Mill on Bentham and Coleridge; p. 84.

61 14. Ibid., p. 148.

62 15. Ibid., p. 70.
62 16. Ibid., p. 73-

62 17. On the Constitution of Church and State ( 1837 edn.),

p. 67.

63 18. Table Talk, recorded by T. AUsop; repr. Nonesuch

Coleridge; pp. 476-477.

64 19. Coleridge; repr. Mitt on Bentham and Coleridge; pp.

129-130.

65 20. Ibid., pp. 131-133.

66 21. Ibid., p. 140.

67 22. On the Constitution of Church and State, V.
67 23. Ibid., V.

67 24. Bentham; repr. Mitt on Bentham and Coleridge; p. 66.
69 25. Church and State, V.

69 26. Ibid., V.

70 27. Ibid., V.
70 28. Ibid., VI.
7 29. Ibid., VI.

70 30. Coleridge; repr. Mill on Bentham and Coleridge; p.

147-

71 31. Autobiography; J. S. Mill; repr. World's Classics; p.

125.
71 32. Ibid., p. 113.

74 33. Letter to Wordsworth, 30 May 1815; repr. Nonesuch

Coleridge; p. 661.

75 34. The Friend, Section 2, Essay 11.
75 35- Letter to Poole, 23 March 1801.

REFERENCES 363

Page Note No.
75 36. Notebooks (1801); repr. Nonesuch Coleridge; p. 158.

75 37- The Friend ( 1818 ), Section 2, Essay 11.

76 38. Notebooks ( 1801); repr. Nonesuch Coleridge; p. 159.

CHAPTER IV

78 i. Works of Thomas Carlyle; Vol. II, p. 233.

78 2. Ibid., p. 233.

78 3, Ibid., pp. 233-234.

79 4- Ibid., pp. 234, 235, 236.
79 5- Ibid., p. 238.

79 6. Ibid., pp. 239-240.

80 7. Ibid., p. 245.
80 8. Ibid., p. 247.

80 9. Ibid., pp. 248-249.

80 10. Ibid., p. 249.

80 11. Ibid., p. 249.

8 1 12. Ibid., pp. 244-245.

82 13. Ibid., pp. 250-252.

83 14. Works, Vol. VI (1869); p. 154-

83 15. Reflections on the French Revolution, p. 12.

85 16. Works, Vol. VI, pp. 109-110.

85 17. Ibid., p. 111.

85 18. Ibid., p. 152.

86 19. Ibid., p. 153-
86 20. Ibid., p. 137.

86 21. Ibid., p. 145.

87 22. Ibid., p. 144.

88 23. Ibid., pp. 174-175.

88 24. Ibid., p. 183.

89 25. Ibid., p. 178.

89 26. Ibid., p. 175-

90 27. Past and Present; Works, Vol. VII, p. 231.
90 28. Shooting Niagara, and After; 1867, p. 4.
90 29, Ibid., p. 10.

90 30. Works, Vol. VI, p. 154.

91 31. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History;

Works, Vol. VII, p. 147.

91 32. Ibid,, p. 148.

92 33. Ibid., p. 154.

92 34. Ibid., p. 156.

93 35- Ibid., p. 143.

CHAPTER V

95, 96 i. Cit. Elizabeth Gaskell; her life and work; A. B. Hop
kins; 1952; p. 77.

KEFEKENCES

and South; E. Gaskeil (1889 edn.); Ch. H. p.

100 3. Tte Great Tradition; F. R. Leavis; London, 1948; p.

101 4. OL Life of John Stuart Milk M. St. J. Packe; 1954;

102 5. &ard 1 T*mes; C. Dickens; Book the Tlaid-Garmnng;

Ch. viii

103 6. Ibid., Ch. vi

105 7. %M, or ffce Two Nfl*iow; B. Disraeli; repr. Pengum

edn., 1954; p- 40-

106 8. Ibid., pp. 71-72-

106 9. Ibid., p. 267.

107 10. Ibid., pp. 216-217.

107 11. Ibid., p. 280, A iit in

109 12. Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet, an Autobiography; C.

Kingsley (1892 edn.); Ch. xxxvii; pp. 285-287.
no 13. Ibid., Preface to the Undergraduates of Cambridge, p.

111 14. Letter to I. Sibree, February 1848, in George Eliot's

Life, as related in her letters and journals; ed. Cross;
'New Edition' (n.d.); pp. 98-99- t x

112 15. Felix Holt the Radical; G. Eliot ( 1913 edn.), vois -5

Vol. 2, p. 41 (Ch. xxvii).

114 16. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 89 (Ch. xxx ).

115 17. Ibid., Vol. i, pp. 266-267 (Ch. xvi).

116 18. Address to Workingmen, by Felix Holt; George Eliot;

Blackwood's, 1868; repr. Essays and Leaves from a
Notebook, Blackwood, 1884; pp. 341-342-
116 19. Ibid., pp. 333 and 34&

CHAPTER VI

119 i. On the Scope and Nature of University Education;

J. H. Newman; 1852; pp. 201-202.

120 2. Ibid., p. 255.

120 3. Ibid., pp. 197-198. _

121 4. On the Constitution of Church and State; S. T. Cole

ridge; V.
121 5. Chartism; T, Carlyle.

121 6. Alton Locke; C, Kingsley (1892 edn.); pp. xxx-xxxi.

122 7. Git Continuation Schools in England and EUewhere;

Sadler; London, 1908; pp. 38-39.

122 8. Ibid.

123 9. Englishman's Register. See Life and Correspondence,

Ch. vi.

123 10. 13 Letters on our Social Condition; Sheffield Courant;
1832; Letter II, pp. 4-5-

REFERENCES 365

Note No.

123 ii. Letter XII, Hertford Reformer; Misc. Works, p. 481.

124 12. Letter VI, Hertford Reformer; Misc. Works, pp. 453

seq.
124 13. Letter XVI, Hertford Reformer; Misc. Works, p. 500.

124 14. Culture and Anarchy; M. Arnold (Murray); p. viiL

125 15. Ibid., p. xi.
125 16. Ibid., p. 10

125 17. Ibid., pp. 12-13.

126 18. Ibid., p. 13.

127 19. Friendship's Garland; M. Arnold (1903 edn.); p. 141.

127 20. Ibid., p. 141.

128 21. Culture and Anarchy, p. viii, and p. 8.

128 22. Ibid., p. 9.

129 23. Ibid., p. 150.

130 24. Ibid., p. 27.

130 25. Reflections on the French Revolution, p. 107.

131 26. Culture and Anarchy, p. 43.

131 27. Ibid., p. 70.

132 28. Ibid., p. 164.

133 29- Ibid., p. 87.
*33 3 Ibid., p. 88.

134 31. Ibid., p. 37.
134 32. Ibid., p. 42.
134 33. Ibid., p. 160.

134 34. Ibid., pp. 157-158. My italics.

136 35. Ibid., p. 30.

137 36. The Scope and Nature of University Education, p.

313.

137 37. Culture and Religion, in some of their relations; J. C.
Shairp; 1870; p. 5.

137 38. The Choice of Books; Harrison, p. 103.

138 39. Democracy, in Mixed Essays (1903 edn.); p. 47.

139 40. Culture and Anarchy, p. 28.

CHAPTER VII

140 i. The Gothic Revival; Kenneth Clark; London (2nd

[revised] edn.); p. 188.
142 2. Contrasts; A. W. Pugin; London, 1841 ( 2nd edn. ) ; pp.

49-50-

144 3. Life of George Eliot; J. W. Cross; London, n.d.; p.

239-

145 4. Ruskin; D. Larg; London, 1932; p. 95.

145 5. Modern Painters, II, Part III, Sec. I, Ch. 3, para. 16.

146 6. Lectures on Art; Library edn., Vol. XX, p. 39.

147 7. In the manuscript printed as an appendix to Modern

Painters (Library edn.), Vol. 2, pp. 388-389.

148 8. Stones of Venice, Vol. I, Appendix 15.

REFERENCES

Page Note No.

14Q 9- Ptaeterita, ii, p. 205.

150 10. Modem Painters, II, Part III, Sec. I, Ch. 3, para. 16.

151 11. John Ruskin, Social Reformer; J. A. Hobson; London,

152 12. Sfcme^if Venice, Vol. 2, Ch. VI, Tfce Nfltore of Gothte

(1899 edM.); p. 165.

153 13- It> id -> PP- l6 3 a* 1 * a 5- 7 7 , , x

153 14- Unto te La&s Essay IV, Ad Valorem (1900 edn.};

pp. 118-119.

154 15- Munera Pulveris (1899 edn.), p. 1.

154 16. Unto Ms Last; Essay III, @fd Judicatis Terram ( 1900
edn.); p. 102.

154 17. Unto this Last, p. 123.

155 18. The Two Paths (1887 edn.), pp. 129-131-

156 19. The Crown of Wild Olive (1886 edn.), p. 73-
156 20. Ibid., p. 101.

158 551. Time and Tide, paras. 138, 139-

158 2,2,. Sesame and Lilies, para. 52.

159 23. The Two Paths (1887 edn.), p. 125.

160 24a, b, c. How I Became a Socialist; repr. Nonesuch

Morris; pp. 657-658.

161 24d. Ibid.

162 25. Ibid., p. 659- My italics.

163 26. Letter to Pall Mall Gazette; in Letters of William

Morris; ed. Henderson; p. 262.

163 27. Letter to Daily News; in Letters; pp. 242-243.

164 28. Art and Socialism; repr. Nonesuch Morris; p. 630.
164 29. The Aims of Art; repr. Nonesuch Morris; pp. 598-599-

164 30. Communism; repr. Nonesuch Morris; p. 669.

165 31. The Beauty of Life; repr. Nonesuch Morris; pp. 542-

543-

165 32. The Aims of Art; repr. Nonesuch Morris; pp. 592-593-

166 33. The Art of the People; repr. Nonesuch Morris; p. 527.
166 34. Art and Socialism; repr. Nonesuch Morris; p. 635.

166 35- Ibid., p. 636.

167 36. How we Live and How we might Live; repr. None

such Morris; p. 581 and pp. 584-585.

168 37. Communism; repr. Nonesuch Morris; p. 660.

169 38. Ibid., p. 661.
169 39- Ibid., p. 660.

169 40. Ibid., pp. 662-663.

170 41. The Art of the People; repr. Nonesuch Morris; p. 520.
170 42. Communism; repr. Nonesuch Morris; p. 663.

170 43. Ibid., p. 665.

REFERENCES 367

PART II

INTERREGNUM
(i)

Page Note No.

175 i. The New Republic; or, Culture, Faith, and "Philosophy

in an English Country House; W. H. Mallock; repr.

London, 1945; p. 147.
175 2. Ibid., p. 155.
175 3. Ibid., p. 157.

175 4. Ibid., pp. 281-282.

176 5. The Limits of Pure Democracy; London, 1918; p. 351.
176 6. Ibid., p. 348.

176 7. Ibid., p. 352.

176 8. Ibid., p. 392.

177 9. Ibid,, p. 280.

178 10. Ibid., p. 288.

(ii)

179 i. Appreciations, with an Essay on Style; Waiter Pater;

London, 1907 (srd edn.); pp. 62-63.

180 2. The Renaissance; Walter Pater; 1904 edn.; p. 239.

180 3. Ibid., p. 229.

18 1 4. Mr Whistler's "Ten O'clock'; London, Chatto &

Windtis, 1888; passim.

182 5. Whistler t). Ruskin; Art and Art Critics; (4th edn.:

n.d.); pp. 14-15-
182 6. 'Ten O CZodfc', p. 7.
182 7. Ibid., p. 9.

182 8. Ibid., p. 29.

183 9. Wilde v. Whistler, being an acrimonious correspond

ence between Oscar Wilde and James A. McNeill

Whistler; London, 1906, privately printed; p. 8.
183 10, The Soul of Man under Socialism; Oscar Wilde; repr.

Essays by Oscar Wilde (ed. Pearson); London, 1950;

p. 232.

183 11. The Critic as Artist; ibid., p. 157.
183 12. Ibid., pp. 156-157.
183 13. The Decay of Lying; ibid., passim.

183 14. The Critic as Artist; ibid., pp. 152-153.

184 15. The Soul of Man under Socialism; ibid., p. 245.
184 16. Ibid., p. 227.

184 17. Ibid., p. 266.

184 18. Ibid,, pp. 230-231,

368 REFEBENCES

Page Note No.

185 19- Ibid., p. 228.

185 20. The Critic as Artist; ibid., p. 125.

(ill)

186 i. New Grub Street; G. Gissing; repr. London, 1927; Ch.

i; A Man of his Day; pp. 4-5.

187 2. Ibid., Ch. xxxMi; The Sunny Way; p. 419.

187 3. Ibid., Ch. xxxiv; A Check; p. 436.

188 4. The Nether World; G. Gissing ( 1890 new edn.); Ch.

xi; p. 392.

189 5- Ibid., pp. 391-392.

189 6. The Unclassed; G. Gissing (new edn., repr. 1901);

Ch. xxv; Art and Misery; p. 211.
191 7. Demos, a story of English Socialism; G. Gissing ( 1897

new edn.); Ch. xxxi; p. 407.
191 8. The Conservative Mind; R. Kirk; London, 1954; p.

337-

191 9. Demos, Ch. xv, p. 202.

192 10. Ibid., Ch. xxix, p. 381.

192 11. Ibid., Ch. xxxvi, p. 470.

(iv)

193 i. Death of an Old Revolutionary Hero; Bernard Shaw,

194 2. The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Cap

italism; Bernard Shaw; London, 1928; p. 219.
194 3- Ibid., p. 456.
196 4. Fabian Essays in Socialism ( 1931 edn. ) ; pp. 186-187.

196 5. Ibid., pp. 31-35, passim.

197 6. Signs of Change; W. Morris; London, 1888; p. 46.
197 7. Fabian Essays, p. 37.

197 8. Review in Commonweal, 25 January 1890.

197 9. Ibid.

198 10. Fabian Essays; Introd. to 1920 edn. (1931 edn.); pp.

xxi-xxix, passim.
198 11. Ibid.; Preface to 1931 edn.; p. ix.

198 12. Intelligent Woman's Guide, pp. 452-453*

199 13. Ibid., p. 164.
199 14. Ibid., p. 454.
199 15- Ibid., p. 459-

(v)

201 i. The Servile State; H. Belloc (srd edn. ? 1927); p. 53

and p. 72.

201 2. Ibid., p. 53.
201 3. Ibid., p. 51.

REFERENCES 369

Page Note No.

201 4. Ibid., p. 116.

201 5. Ibid., p. 127.
2,02, 6. Ibid., p. viii.

202 7. Guilds and the Social Crisis; A. J. Penty; London,

1919; p. 46.

202 8. Ibid., pp. 46-47.
202 9. Ibid., p. 47.

202 10. Ibid., p. 57.

203 n. Old Worlds for New: a study of the post-industrial

State; A. J. Penty; pp. 28-29.
203 12. Ibid., p. 33.
203 13. Ibid., p. 33.
203 14. Ibid., p. 35.

203 15. Ibid., p. 176.

204 16. Essays in Social Theory; G. D. H. Cole; London, 1950;

p. 90-

204 17. Ibid., p. 93.

(vi)

205 i. Speculations: essays on humanism and the philosophy

of art; T. E. Hulme; ed. H. Read; London (2nd edn.),
repr. 1954; p. 116.

206 2. Ibid., pp. 255-256.

206 3. Ibid., pp. 32-34.

207 4. Ibid., p. 117.

207 5. Ibid., p. 118.

208 6. Ibid., p. 37.

209 7. Ibid., p. 254,

209 8. Ibid., p. 259, note.

209 9. Ibid., p. 259, note.

209 10. Ibid., p. 133.

209 11. Ibid., p. 127.

209 12. Ibid., p. 120.

209 13. Ibid., p. 77 et al.

209 14. Ibid., p. 97.

210 15. Ibid., p. 104.

PART III

CHAPTER I

214 i. Climbing down Pisgah; Selected Essays (Penguin), p.
50.

214 2. Ibid., p. 53.

070 REFERENCES

Page Note No. .

215 3. Nottingham and the Mining Country; Sekcted Essays,

p. 120.

215 4. Democracy; Selected Essays, p. 94.

216 5. Nottingham and the Mining Country, p. 119.

216 6. Lady Chatterleys Lover; Works, repr. 1950; PP- *73-

174.

217 7. Nottingham and the Mining Country, p. 119.
219 8. Ibid., pp. 121-122.

222 9. Democracy; Selected Essays, p. 88.

222 10. Ibid., p. 89.

223 11. Ibid., pp. 91-92.

223 12. Ibid., p. 89.

224 13. Ibid., p. 93-

224 14. Ibid., p. 94.

225 15. Ibid., p. 95-

225 16. Ibid., p. 76.

226 17. Ibid., pp. 9^-93-

227 18. Studies in Classic American Literature; p. 12.
227 19. Ibid.

227 20. Democracy; Selected Essays, p. 95*

229 21. Letters; p. 286.

229 22. Ibid., p. 196.

229 23. John Galsworthy; Selected Essays, p. 227.

230 24. Sex versus Loveliness; Selected Essays, p. 18.
230 25. The State of Funk; Selected Essays, pp. 100-101.

CHAPTER II

232 i. The Acquisitive Society; R. H. Tawney; London,
1921; p. 7.

232 2. Ibid., pp. 12-14.

233 3. Ibid., pp. 19-20.

233 4. Ibid., p. 21.

234 5- Ibid., p. 19-

234 6. Ibid., pp. 47-48.

235 7- Ibid., pp. 48-49-

235 8. Ibid., p. 42.

236 9. Equality; R. H. Tawney; London (revised edn.),

1931; pp. 30-31.

237 10. Ibid., pp. 46-50, passim.
237 11. Ibid., p. 50.

237 12. Ibid., p. 53.

238 13. Ibid., p. 103.

239 14. Ibid., p. 103.

239 15. Ibid., p. 103.

240 16. Ibid., p. 112.

240 17. Ibid., p. 113.

241 18. Ibid., p. 116.

REFERENCES 37!

"Page Note No.

242, 19. Ibid., pp. 116-117, and p. 106.

CHAPTER III

243 i. Mitt on Bentham and Coleridge; introd. F. R. Leavis;

London, 1950; p. 140.

243 2. Ibid., p. 167.

243 3. The Idea of a Christian Society; T. S. Eliot; London,

1939; p- 8.

244 4- Ibid., p. 9.
244 5- Ibid., p. 64.

244 6. Ibid., p. 34,

245 7. Ibid., p. 34.
245 8. Ibid., p. 33-

245 9- Ibid., p. 33 and pp. 61-62.

246 10. Ibid., pp. 30-31-
246 11. Ibid., p. 21.

246 12. Ibid., p. 39.

247 13- Ibid., pp. 39-40.

248 14. Notes towards the Definition of Culture; T. S. Eliot;

London, 1948; p. 25.

248 15. Ibid., p. 16.

248 16. Ibid., p. 16.

250 17. Ibid., p. 31.

251 18. Ibid., p. 19.
251 19. Ibid., p. 21.
251 20. Ibid., p. 22.

251 21. Ibid., p. 24.

252 22. Ibid., p. 35.
257 23. Ibid., p. 37-

CHAPTER IV

(i)
262 i. Principles of Literary Criticism; I. A. Richards; Lon

don, 1924; pp. 56-57'
262 2. Principles, p. 36.

262 3. Science and Poetry; I. A. Richards; London, 1926; pp.

47 and 53-54-

263 4. Principles, p. 46.
263 5* Ibid., p. 48.

263 6. Ibid., p. 51.

264 7- Ibid., p. 55-

264 8. Science and Poetry, pp. 82-83.

264 9. Principles, p. 196.

265 10. Ibid., p. 203.

372

KEFEBENCES

Page Note No.

265 ii. Ibid, p. 236.

266 12. Science and Poetry, p. 20.

266 13. Principles, pp. 237-238.

267 14. Art and Society; Herbert Read; pp. 94-95-

(ii)

271 i. Mass Civilization and Minority Culture; Cambridge,

1930; pp. 3-5-

272 2. Ibid., p. 26.

276 3. Cutout and EfurfiWMnenfc tte Training of Critical

Awareness; F. R. Leavis and Denys Thompson; Lon
don, 1933; P- 87-

277 4- Ibid., p. 91.
277 5. Ibid., pp. 68-69.
277 6. Ibid., pp. 91-92.
279 7- Ibid., pp. 96~97-

CHAPTER V

283 i. 'Newcastle Chronicle, 12 April 1887; cat. William Mor

ris, Romantic to Revolutionary; E. P. Thompson; Lon
don, 1955; p. 522.

284 2. Critique of Political Economy; Karl Marx; Preface;

Eng. trans., Stone; pp. nff.

285 3. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte; Karl

Marx; Eng. trans., de Leon; 1898; p, 24.

286 4. Engels, letter to J, Bloch, 21 September 1890; Selected

Correspondence, p. 475.

286 5. English translation as In Defence of Materialism;

G. V. Piekhanov; trans., A. Rotnstein; London, 1947;
V, p. 207.

287 6. Ibid., pp. 223 and 237.

287 7. Ibid., p. 237.

288 8. The Mind in Chains; ed. C. Day Lewis; London,

1937; p. 15.

288 9. Ibid., p. 24.

289 10. Ibid., pp. 21-22.

291 11. Crisis and Criticism; Alick West; London, 1937, pp.

88-89-

291 12. Op. cit., pp. 770 and 763.

292 13. The Novel and the People; Ralph Fox; London, 1937;

p. 22.

294 14. Op. cit., p. 114.

295 15- Ibid., p. 133.
295 16. Ibid., p. 138.

295 17. Ibid., pp. 138-139.

REFERENCES 373

Page Note No.

296 18. Illusion and Reality; C. Caudwell (new edn.); 2-94&I
p. 257.

296 19- Ibid., p. 214,

296 so. Ibid., Biographical Note, by G. T.; p. 5-
296 21. Modern Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 6, No. 4; Autumn
1951; p. 346.

296 22. Ibid., p, 346.

297 23. Studies in a Dying Culture; C. Caudwell; London;

1938; repr. 1948; pp. 53-54-

297 24. Further Studies in a Dying Culture; C. Caudwell;

London, 1949; p. 109.

298 25. Illusion and Reality, p. 265.

298 26. Cit. M. Slater; Modern Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 6,
No. 3; Summer 1951; p. 265.

300 27. Illusion and Reality, p. 55.

301 28. See e.g. Comforth; Modern Quarterly, New Series,

Vol. 6, No. 4; Autumn 1951; p. 357-

302 29. Cit. Blunt; Art under Capitalism and Socialism, in

Mind in Chains; p. 122 ('Remarks to Clara Zetkia').

303 30. Collected Works; Lenin; Vol. IV, Book 2, p. 114-

CHAPTER VI

304 i. Critical Essays; George Orwell; London, 1946; p. 45.
304 2. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell; London, 1951;

306 3. Ibid., p. 208.

306 4. Ibid., p. 210.

306 5. The Road to Wigan "Pier; Orwell; London, 1937; p.

205.
306 6. Rudyard Kipling, in Critical Essays; London, 1946; p.

103.
306 7. WeUs, Hitler and the World State, in Critical Essays;

p. 84.
306 8. Rudyard Kipling, Critical Essays, p. 103.

306 9. Politics and Letters; Summer 1940; p. 39.

307 10. The Road to Wigan Pier, p. 206.
307 11. Ibid., p. 248.

307 12. Ibid., p. 205.

307 13. Coming up for Air; London; 2nd edn,, 1948, p. 148.

307 14. Keep the AJspidistra Flying; London, 1936; p. 64.

307 15. The Road to Wigan Pier, p. 196.

308 16. Politics and the English Language, in Shooting an

Elephant, p. 93.

313 17. Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. 73 and 227.
313 18. George Orwell, by J. Walsh; Marxist; Quarterly, Vol.

3, No. i, January 1956; pp.

INDEX
(Main sections in bold type)

A. WORKS AND AUTHORS

Acquisitive Society, The, 232

35

Address to Working Men, by
Felix Holt, 116

Aims of Art, The, 168

Alton Locke, 94, 108-10, 112,
121

Animal Farm, 312

Apology for the Present Re
vival of Christian Architec
ture, 141

Aristotle, 42, 140

Amold, Matthew, 4-5, 7, 79,
92, 116, 120-39, 150, 157,
174-75, i79-8o, 183-85,
195, 197, 207, 231-32, 235,
239, 251, 253, 256, 261,
271-72, 274, 290

Arnold, Thomas, 123-24

Art of Donald McGill, The,

305
Autobiography (Gorki), 190

9^
Autobiography (MiH), 71-72

Bell, Clive, 240, 261

Belloc, Hilaire, 200-2

Bentham, Jeremy, 53-54, 58-
66, 76, 195, 263, 269

Bemal, J. D., 296

Between the Lines, 270

Blake, William, 33-52, 162

Bourne, George, 276

British Banner, The, 126

Brydges, Egerton, 38

Btrayan, John, 280

Burke, Edmund, 3-^2, 24, 34,
68, 83, 87, 120, 125-27,
129-30, 134, 137-39, 150,

204, 206, 223, 232, 253,
260, 281-82, 347

Butler, Samuel, 173
Byron, George Lord, 24, 34,
229

Carlyle, Thomas, 21, 40, 71,
76, 77-93, 103, 108, 113,
116, 121, 125, 141, 143,
146, 150-51, 158, 160, 178,
195, 197, 199, 213-14, aiS.

221, 226, 246, 249, 251,

253, 256

Catechism of the New View of
Society, A, 32

Caudwefl, C., 294-99
Change in the Village, 276
Chartism, 84-89
Chateaubriand, Frangois,

comte de, 40

Chesterton, G. 1C, 200, 307
Cinders, 208
Clark, Kenneth, 140
Cobbett, William, 3-22, 23,

56, 61, 63, 85, 88, 103, 106,

113, 162, 168, 223, 276, 278
Cole, G. D. BL, 200, 203-4
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 21,

22, 24, 33-52, 53-7, 77,

92, 105, 120, 123-25, 137-
38, 141, ISO, 158, 160, 173,

223, 232, 239, 43, 249-51,
253, 256, 271-72, 274, 281,
348

Colloquies, 2228, 231
Coming up for Air, 309
Common Pursuit, The, 270
Conjectures on Original Com
position, 4041

376

INDEX

and

Constitution of Church

State, On the, 62-71
Contrasts, 3, 141-43
ComMl, The, 157
Crabbe, George, 277-78
Cf&fc and Criticism, 290-91
Critique of Political Economy,

284
Culture and Anarchy, 116,

120, 124-39, 157
Culture and Environment,

270-80

Darwin, Charles, 294
De Laguna, 294
Defence of Poetry, 45, 52
Demos, 186, 188, 191
Deserted Village, The, 277
Development of the Monist

Theory of History, The,

286-87
Dickens, Charles, 20, 85, 99-

104, 161, 280, 304
Disraeli, Benjamin, 88, 104-7,

ill
Down and Out in Paris and

London, 309
Drama and Society in the Age

of Jonson, 270
Dream of John Ball, 167

Ecclesiologist, The, 146
Edinburgh Review, 77
Education and the University,

270, 273
Eighteenth Srumaire of Louis

Napoleon, The, 285
Eliot, George, 110-18, 144,

3-73

Eliot, T. S. s 127, 207, 210,

^43-60, 261, 279-80
Engels, Friedricli, 283-86, 292
Englishman's Register, 123

Equality (Arnold), 139
Equality ( Tawney ) , 23 1-32,

235-42

Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy, An,
54

Fabian Essays, 195-96
Factory as it might be, A, 168
Felix Holt, 94, 110-18, 192
Fiction and the Reading Pub
lic, 270

Fox, Ralph, 292
Fragments (Novalis), 77
Freud, Sigmund, 267
Friendship's Garland, 126-27

Galsworthy, John, 229
GaslkeH, Elizabeth, 94-100,

111-12, 188
Gissing, George, 185-93, 194,

290
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,

40, 77

Goldsmith, Oliver, 277-78
Gorlci, Maxim, 190-91, 298
Gothic Revival, The, 140
Green, T. H., 76

Hard Times, 20, 85, 94, 99-

104, 126

Harrison, Frederic, 137
Hayek, 200
Hazlitt, William, 31
Herder, Johann Gottfried von,

140
Heroes and Hero-Worship, On f

84,90

Hertford Reformer, 123
History of England, 21
History of the Protestant Ref
ormation, 21

Hobson, J. A., 150-51, 200
Homage to Catalonia, 309
Hopkins, G. M,, 168
Horace, 140
Hough, Graham, 144
How to Read a Page, 269
How we are Governed, 349
How we Live, 168
Huckleberry Finn, 330
Hulme, T. E., 174, 205-10
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 133
Huxley, Aldous, 174
Hyperion, 50

Idea of a Christian Society,

The, 2,43-47, 253~54 259
Illusion and Reality, 296-98
Ion, 40

Jean Paul (Richter), 77

Keats, John, 33-52, 180, 183

Kingsley, Charles, 87, 108-10,

111, 121-22, 188
Kirk, Russell, 191
Knights, L. C., 270

Lady Chatterley's Lover, 228
Last Hundred Days of English

Liberty, 61
Latter-Day Pamphlets, 84, 90

Lawrence, D. H., 95, 173,

213-30, 276, 309
Leavis, F. R., 53, 100, 144,

215, 221, 26l, 27O~8l

Leavis, Q. D., 270

Lenin, V. L, 302-3

Letters from England, 24-25

Liberty (Mil), 61

Limits of Pure Democracy,

The, 176-77
Lingard, John, 21
Longinus, 140
Lynd, R. and H., 274

Macaulay, T. B., 121

Macbeth, 296

MacCarthy, Desmond, 215

Mallock, W. H., 174-78, 205

Malthus, Thomas, 88

Man of Property, The, 185-86

Mannheim, Karl, 256-58

Man, 294

Marx, Karl, 22, 79, 140, 283-

303

Mary Barton, 94-98, 100, 112
Mass Civilization and Minority

Culture, 27071
Maurice, F. D., 122
Middletown, 274, 278
Mill, James, 60
Mill, John Stuart, 53-76, 101,

116, 180, 195, 198, 243, 294

INDEX 377

Mind in Chains, The, 288
Montesquieu, Charles, baron
de, 140

Moore, Thomas, 39
Morris, William, 21, 45, 140,
143, 151, 159-70, 173, 192,

195-98, 202, 223, 227, 251,

255, 283, 290-92

Nether World, The, 186-89,

192

New Grub Street, 186-87, 192
New Republic, The, 174-76
Newman, J. H., 119-21, 123,

125-26, 137, 138-39, 182
News from Nowhere, 167-68
Nineteen Eighty-Four, 304,

312-13
Noire, 294
North and South, 94, 98-99,

100, 104, 107
Notes towards the Definition of

Culture, 246-60
Novalis, 77
Novel and the People, The,

292

Observations on the Effect of
the Manufacturing System,
28-29

Orage, A., 200

Orwell, George, 188, 304-13

Owen, Robert, 22-32, 195

Paget, R., 294

Paine, Thomas, 33

Paradise Lost, 248

Past and Present, 84, 89-90

Pater, Walter, 174, 178-81,

183-85, 261
Penty, A. J., 200-3
Pilgrim's Progress, The, 248
Plato, 40

Plekhanov, Georgi, 286-88
Political Economy, 54, 101
Political Economy of Art, The,

143

Political Register, 3
Politics and Letters, v, 311

37 8 INDEX

Practical Criticism, 268
Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 44,

Price, Richard, 8

Principles of Literary Criti

cism, 261-62, 268
Prospects of Industrial Civi

lization, 282
Pugin, A. C., 141
Pugin, A. W., 3, 21, 140-43,

146, 156, 161
Pygmalion, 194

Rainbow, The, 228
Read, Herbert, 210, 267
Reflections on the French Rev

olution, 6-13, 21, 127
Religion and the Rise of Capi

talism, 231

Renaissance, The, 179-80
Renan, Ernest, 133
Richards, I. A., 180, 261-70,

272, 274

Road to Serfdom, The, 200
Road to Wigan Pier, The, 305,

309

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 40,

56, 205
"Rural Rides, 20

Ruskin, John, 21, 43, 45, 71,
76, 140-59, 160, 166, 174-
75, 181, 195, 202, 231, 234,
239, 251, 253, 256, 283

Russell, Bertrand, 282

Sartor Resartus, 84

St Mator, 228

Schiller, J. C. F. von, 40, 77

Science and Poetry, 261

Scrutiny, 270

Servile State, The, 200-2

Shairp, J. C., 137

Shaw, G. B., 173, 178, 193-

99, 3<>7
Sheffield Courant, 123

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 24, 33-

52* 91, 179, 183
Shooting Niagara, 84, 90, 113,

116

Signs of the Times, 77-83

Smith, Adam, xi, 38

Smythe, C., 24

Sons and Lovers, 221

Sorel, Georges, 209

Soul of Man under Socialism,
The, 183

Southey, Robert, 22-32, 34,
232, 253

Speculations, 205-10

Sphere and Duties of Govern
ment, The, 132-33

Stones of Venice, The, 149

Strachey, Lytton, 143

Sturt, George (George Bourne),
276-78

Sybil, 88, 94, 104-7

Tawney, R. H., 231-42, 348
Thompson, Denys, 270, 276
Thompson, E. P., 291
Thomson, George, 296
Tono Bungay, 185
True Principles of Pointed or

Christian Architecture, 141
Turgeniev, Ivan, 194
Twain, Mark, 280

Unclassed, The, 189, 192
University Education, On the
Scope and Nature of, 119

20

Unto this Last, 157

Useful Work versus Useless

Toil, 168
Utopia, 27

Vico, Giovanni, 140
Village, The, 277-78
Virgin Soil, 194
Vision of Judgment, 24
Voice of Civilization, 270

Warner, R. E., 288-89
Way of all Flesh, The, 185
Wealth of Nations, The, xi
Webb, Sidney, 195-99
Wells, H. G., 178
West, Alick, 290-95

INBEX 379

Wheelwright's Shop, The, 276 Wordsworth, William, 33-52,
Whistler, James, 178-79, 181- 179, 266-67

83 Workers in the Dawn, 189,
Wilde, Oscar, 173, 178-79, 192

183-85 Writers and Leviathan, 311
Wilenski, R., 145

Women in Love, 228 Young, E., 40-42, 48

B. WORDS, THEMES AND PERSONS

Advertising, 247, 274-76, 278,
280, 324-26, 332

'Aesthete*, xiv, 48, 146-47,

178-85
'Aesthetics', xiv, 48, 144-49,

178-85, 192, 261, 270
'Aliens", 131, 165
'Aristocracy of talent', 132,

178, 195
'Art', xifi-xiv, 33-5*, 73, 140-

70, 178-85, 255, 264-67,

290-99, 304, 315
'Art for art's sake', 165-66, 178
'Artisan', xiv, 47
'Artist', xui-xiv, 33-52, 90-91,

145-46, 147-48, 218, 264-

68, 293, 297
'Artistic , xiv, 48
Ashton, Thomas, 97
'Atomistic', xv, 150, 204, 257,

310-11
Atdee, Clement R., 249

Basic English, 269

'Bounder, 101

'Bourgeois', 301-3, 339, 343-

45, 350

'Bureaucracy*, xv, 201, 204
'Business', xv, 62, 64

Camden Society, 146
'Capitalism', xv, 22, 151, 167,

194-206, 233, 259, 288-89,

300

'Captains of Industry', 90
'Cash-nexus', 83, 90, 99, 151,

221

Chadwick, Edwin, 101
Chapman and Hal, 96
Chartism, 84-88, 244
Christian Socialism, 24, 108-

10
'Civilization', 55-56, 66-68,

120, 141, 160, 229-30, 272
'Class', xiii, 116, 121-22, 126-

27, 130-36, 157-58, 236*

241, 249-60, 303, 3<>5-@>

312, 338-51
'Class conflict', xiii
'Class consciousness', xiii
'Class legislation', xiii
'Class prejudice', xiii
'Class war', xiii
'Classicism', 42, 205-10
'Glens/ , 69-71, 92, 158, 256,

272

'Clerk', 191
Clifford, W. K., 174
'Collectivism', xv, 150, 2002
Combination Laws, 18
'Commercialism', xv, 163, 245-

47, 265, 330
'Common', xv
Communication, 268, 269,

319-36

Communism, xv, 302-3, 310
'Community', 204, 220, 227,

310, 315, 33^-58
'Condition-of-England ques
tion', 85
Conservatism, 3, 104, 150,

177, &43, ^59, ^82

3$

Coventry, 15

'Craftsman', xiv, 47

'Cranks', xv, 95, 307

'Creative', 48

Cromwell, Oliver, 84

'Cultivated*, 39, $7, 120, 240

'Cultivation', 67-69, 119, 120,
138, 162

'Culture*, xiv-xvii, 12, 27, 32,
37-39, 4^-47, 64-76, 89,
92-93, 120-39, 141? M9,
154, 162-63, 174-75, 179,

183, 193, 202, 206-8, 236-
42, 243, 247-60, 264, 271-
72, 288-91, 301, 304, 314-

16, 336-58

'Decadent', 300

'Democracy, xii, 14, 61, .86-
87, 109-10, 116, 129, 151,

157, 176-78, 194-99, 2Q3-
6, 209, 224, 246, 275, 304,
315-18, 323-24, 330, 334,
349, 352

'Democrat', xii
Dent, 3EL, 249
'Design*, 155-56
'Distributivism', 200-2
'Doctrinaire', xv
'Dominative', 255, 332-33,
355-56

'Earnest', xv, 222
'Education', xv

(See also Popular Educa
tion.)

'filite', 249-58
Emigration, 88, 98, 103, 109
Enclosure Acts, 12
'Equalitarian', xv
Equality, 150, 157, 169, 177-

78, 198, 209, 225-26, 236-

38 % 257, 304-7, 336-38
'Exile', 189-90, 220, 226-28,

308-13

'Fabian', 71, 101, 168, 193-99,
203, 255

Fane, Violet, 174

INDEX

Fascism, 86, 198, 209, 213
'Freedom*, 127-28
French Revolution, 4, 6, 11,
13, 82, 86, 206

Trench Revolution, Our', xii,

'Genius', xiv, 48, 90-91
'Getting-on', xv, 156
'Good English', 342
'GotMc', 141, 143,

167, 250

'Gradgrind', 85, 100-1, 102
'Guild', 158, 201-4
Guild of Saint George, 158,

227
Guild Socialism, 200-4, 306

'Handmade', xv
Haydon, Benjamin R., 43
Hennell, Sara, 144
'Highbrow', xv, 307
'Higher classes', xiii
'Humanist', 205-10
'Humanitarian*, xv, 194

'Idealist', xv

Idealist philosophy, 40-42, 53,

76, 291, 298
Ideology', xv
'IHth', 153, 235
'Imitation', 40-42, 146
'Industrial', xii
Industrial capitalism, 300
'Industrial Revolution', xi, xii,

3, 13, 28, 35, 61, 100, 123,

136, 197, 339
Industrialism, xii, 4, 12, 41,

78, 84, 95, 100-3, 121, 129,

152-57, 214-21, 228-30,

232-35, 245-46, 267, 299,

306, 315-16, 344
'Industrious', xi-xii
Industry', xi, 127, 130, 193,

203, 238, 314-16, 355
Infant schools, 30-31
'Intellectual', xv
'Isms', xv, 224

INDEX

381

Jacobinism, xii, 129-30
Jowett, Benjamin, 174

Labour Party, 168, 307
'Ladder, educational*, 350-51
'Laissez-faire*, 27, 61-62, 85-

88, 123-24, 128, 150-51,

168, 348

Language, origins of, 294-95
LasM, Harold J., 249
Liberalism, xv, 12, 55, 123-

24, 127, 133, 135, 151, 160,

195, 233-34, ^43, 246, 259-

60, 348

Local newspapers, 331
'Lower classes', xiii
'Lower middle class*, xiii, 326
'Lower orders*, xiii
Luddites, 31

'Machinery*, 79, 113-14, 129,

135, 169, 179, 197, 204, 245
'Market, literary*, 35-39, 51,

90-93, 186-87, 324-30
Marxism, 151, 195, 261, 280,

282, 283-303, 307, 313
'Mass civilization", 275, 316
'Mass conraumcalioif* 315-36
'Mass democracy*, 315-19
'Masses', xv, 90, no, 152,

177-78, 189, 217-18, 241,

246-47, 275, 281, 303, 313,

316-35, 355
'Mechanical', 41, 77-80, 81,

83, 124, 125, 149. 160, 209,

215, 222, 226, 281
'Mechanism', 78-81, 84, 197,

232

'Mediaeval 9 , xv
'Medlaevalism*, xv, 20-21,

26, 89, 141-42, 151, 159,

167, 181, 200-6, 250, 277
'Middle classes*, xiii, 35, 60, 87,

97, 112, 126, 130-33, 151,

160, 164, 209, 218, 229,

306, 325, 33^-51
'Middling classes", xffi
'Mind*, 73
'Minority Culture', 165, 240-

42, 251, 270-74,

341

'Mob', xv, 246, 316-18, 322
'Mob-rule*, xii
'Montesinos*, 22
'More, Sir Thomas*, 25
Multiple transmission, 321-36

National Church, 69-70, 92,

272

'Negative capability*, 4g-5o
'Negative identification*, 189-

91, 192, 290
New Harmony, 227
New Lanark, 30-31

'Operative*, xv, 62, 152
'Organic', 41, 75, 124, 140,

149, 151, 201, 227, 257,

276, a8i-8a
'Organic society*, 12, 13, 40-

41, 149-51, ^7^-79, 315
'Original', 40-41, 48
'Outsider*, 353
Oxford culture, 163

Panopticon, 142

Pantisocracy, 227

Patronage, literary, 35-36

'Perfection', riv, 11, 46, 67-69,
87, 119-21, 124-39, 145-
46, 147, 150, 152, 206-7,
241, 251

Peterloo, 31, 34

'Philistine*, 20, 125, 130, 184

'Popular culture*, 274, 278,

324-32, 340-41
Popular Education, 17, 20, 27,

32, 71, 88-89, 102, 114,

121-23, 129, 15, 158, 177,

217, 247, 257, 279-81, 321,

325-28, 350-51
'Popular Press*, 187, 280, 324-

27

'Pretentious*, xv
'Primitivism*, xv
'Production*, 127, 130, 152,

224, 235

INDEX

'Progress', xv, 126, 130, 205-

9, 278
'Proletariat', xv, 3, 191, 201,

312-13, 339
'Public', 37-39, 3*.8> 33^, 334

Radicalism, 14, 60, 83, 111-

12, 1 16, 189, 243
Rananim, 227
Hank*, xiii
'Hank-and-file', xv
'Rationalism', xv
Reform Bill 60-61, 86, 105
'Reformer', xv
'Reformism', xv
'Remnant', 131-32, 195
Renaissance, 42, 205
'Revolutionary 1 , xv
Romanticism, xv, 33-5^, 9-

91, 145-46, 178, 183, 195,

205-10, 218-19, 224, 261,

267,

'Salary', xv

'Science', xv, 137, 143, 161,

193, 262, 272, 296
'Scientist', xv
'Service', 224, 34S-5Q
Silbree, J., no
Socialism, xv, 143, 150, 160

70, 176-78, 183-85, 192,

1Q3-99, 202-6, 224, 225,
234, 283, 290, 2Q5, 302-3,
306, 307, 308, 309-11

'Socialist realism', 298, 302
'Solidarity*, xv, 344-55
'Speculator*, xv
Spencer, Herbert, 174
'Spirit of the nation*, 12
'State', 10-11, 129-34, 200-4,

225

'Steam-engine intellects', 101
'Stock notions', 124-28, 135
'Stock responses', 265
'Strike', xv

'Subtopia 7 , 127
'Suburban', xv, 228, 277
'Superstructure', 284-86
'Swinish multitude", 347

'Taste', 44-45, *37>
'Totalitarian', 302, 310
'Trade', 101
Trade unionism, 18, 97, 103,

106, 169-70, 198, 303, 306,

346

'Tradition', 207
Truck system, 104

'Unemployment',
'Unnatural', 16

'Upper classes', xiii
'Upper middle classes', xiii
Utilitarianism, 22, 53-76, 89,

101-4, isi, 123, 160, 195,

224, 269, 294

Vagrant*, 220, 309-12, 330

'Wealth', 125-26, 130, 152-55
*Whig', 105, 160, 168
Wilcox, E. W., 268
Windham, William, 3
'Working class culture", 339-

47
'Working class violence', 96

98, 107, 1 12-13, 122, 134-

36
'Working classes', xiii, 14-20,

32, 85, 87, 94-99 100? 103-

4, 106, 10811, 112, 114-

15, 121-22, 130, 134-36,

159, 162, 189-95, 204, 209,
217-21, ^90, 303, 312-13,
326, 339-51

Working Men's Colleges, 121-

Toung England', 24, 104-7

It is the thesis of this remarkable book that the concept of
"culture" as we know it today first came into English thought
during the Industrial Revolution, and that it developed in
direct relationship to society in general. Mr. Williams traces
its growth through Burke, Cobbett, the Romantic poets, Mill,
Carlyle, Arnold; the "industrial novels" of Mrs. Gaskell,
Dickens, Kingsley, and others; Ruskin, William Morris,
Shaw, Lawrence, Tawney, and the Marxist critics.

"The value of [the] book is not only that it traces for us the
history of the idea [of culture] but that it also forces us at
every point to try to define it for ourselves ... A model of
plain speaking, fairness and concentrated history-telling."
Richard Chase in Partisan Review

". . . worth a library of literary and political tracts in that it
digs into the ideological layers that envelop modern politics.
. . . Exactly to the point of contemporary discussions of
value." Harold Rosenberg in The Nation

". . . important, often brilliant, and a healthy change from
the tiresome fear of our expanding society that is now so
common among intellectuals." Alfred Kazin in The Reporter

i " I

V4-

A DOUBLEDAY ANCHOR BOOK

110670